


it never gets dark

by vaudelin



Category: Supernatural, Wayward Sisters (TV)
Genre: Canon Universe, Canon-Typical Violence, Case Fic, Dean/Cas Big Bang Challenge 2018, Emotional Constipation, F/F, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Getting Together, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Miscommunication, Pining, Sex in the Impala, Sharing a Bed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-21
Updated: 2018-11-21
Packaged: 2019-08-25 06:12:38
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 29,768
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16655737
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vaudelin/pseuds/vaudelin
Summary: Normally Dean wouldn't get out of bed for a run-of-the-mill kidnapping, even without the hangover, but when Sam can't even write out the missing kid's name, he has to admit something's up.Helping Sam, Patience, and Claire figure out who (or what) erased all traces of the kid is as good a distraction as any to get over Cas bailing from an abortive love confession. But when finding answers comes at a terrible physical price, the team is left with no choice but to call in any help they can get.Like it or not, Dean and Cas have some uncomfortable truths to confront, and when worst comes to worst they'll discover what truly matters in the end.





	it never gets dark

**Author's Note:**

> It's here, finally! Thank you Muse and Jojo, for all your effort in running the DCBB this year. All my love to [jad](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jad/pseuds/jad) for your enthusiasm and cheerleading, to [Lise](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MorteLise/pseuds/MorteLise) for your wit and wisdom and continued friendship all these years, and to [Remmy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/remmyme/pseuds/remmyme) for your endless support and impeccable editing and suggestions. This fic wouldn't have made it anywhere near its current shape without you guys. Thank you thank you thank you ❤
> 
> My deepest gratitude goes out to my partner this year, [kayanem](https://kayanem.tumblr.com/). My anxiety dissipated as soon as I'd discovered who I would be working with, and the past months have been delightful conversation and gobsmacked glimpses into [kayanem's work](https://kayanem.tumblr.com/post/180357234554/art-for-lovely-vaudelins-it-never-gets-dark). I am thrilled to have had the chance to collaborate with you for this year's DCBB ❤ Please go give her all the love she rightfully deserves!
> 
> Onward to puke city, let's go!

Dean pulls out from dark dreams to the sound of his cell phone ringing. It takes two rings to clear his head, roll over and swing his legs over the edge of the bed; another four pass before he finds the damned device buried in a pair of discarded jeans. He groans, chin sinking down, hangover briefly getting the better of him. He swipes to answer. “What.”

“I know,” Sam breathes out, harsh and reprimanding. “I didn’t want to bother you guys, but me and the girls are having trouble.”

Dean straightens, his foot stubbing an empty bottle, rocking the glass to its tipping point. He touches a hand to its rim, stilling it. “You okay? Thought Claire just needed backup.”

“We are, and she did,” Sam confirms. “But after, there was this kidnapping—”

Dean frowns. “Kidnapping? Why’re you—”

“—and can I send you something about it? Just a test. A text.”

Dean stares ahead, his gears grinding. “You had to call to ask if you can send a text?”

Sam mustn’t catch his displeasure. “Yes.”

Dean digs his fingers into his cheeks and pulls until the rims around his eyes open red. Sam’s word games have shown up about two coffees too early. “Fine. Fire away.”

A moment later, Dean’s phone pings. He drops his hand to open the message, except the text is muddied by fingerprint smudges. He scrubs the phone across his shirt, breathes on the glass, and then repeats the motion over a leg of his boxers. The screen is clear; the words are not.

“What the hell.” Dean squints, frowning. He turns on the light by his bed, tilts the phone every which way but no, it’s clean. Somehow the text simply doesn’t display.

“Dean? You there?” Sam says, quiet without speakerphone turned on.

Dean hauls the phone back up to his ear. “Yeah. But I can’t read it. What’re you trying to send?”

“Abbie Lynn.”

“What?”

“The name of a teenager who went missing here around noon yesterday.”

“Again, how is it an us-case?”

“Because all traces of her existence wiped out not five hours later. Case and point, the text I just sent.”

Dean sits up straighter. “Say what?”

“She’s literally disappeared, Dean,” Sam says. “Social media, news reports, attendance records—everything about her is gone.” Papers rustle on his end of the line. “The girls and I were heading south to Sioux Falls when the AMBER Alert hit. The local stations were in a frenzy over this teen’s abduction: somebody came into her high school in broad daylight, stole her straight out of a crowded cafeteria. They walked across the parking lot, down a nearby street—”

“Wait, they walk? No getaway car? Nobody chased them down?”

“Exactly. And get this: at the time eyewitnesses reported that the kidnapper was seven, maybe eight feet tall, wearing robes, and that they and Abbie just vanished into thin air. Anyway, her friends and the teachers at her school immediately call the cops. A manhunt gets started and the media goes crazy for the next couple hours, when suddenly it all just… stops.”

“They found her.”

“No. She stops _existing_. The radio report seriously dropped off mid-sentence.” Sam huffs a breath, like the thought is too big to hold. “Look, I know I promised I wouldn’t interrupt you guys, but we could use the extra help here.”

Dean snags on the assumption of Cas, glancing to the unused half of his bed. Not worth correcting Sam over though. “I’m not digging through the library for you.”

Sam laughs. “Yeah, this is maybe out of your league. But trust me, the girl’s non-existence isn’t even the weirdest part. You _need_ to get here and see this.”

Dean sucks at his teeth. “Yeah. Okay, okay.” He drops his head. “Give me an address, I’ll meet you there.”

“For sure. Also, stop before you hit the city, okay? Don’t go an inch farther in, not unless you want to wreck the Impala.”

Dean scowls. “The hell does that mean?”

Sam chuckles. “Seriously, trust me on this.”

He waits until Sam hangs up before tossing his cell across his empty bed.

 

* * *

 

Dean takes an age to bully himself through his headache, brushing his teeth and swilling with the hair of the dog that bit him, spending too much of the morning packing all of his shit into a well-worn duffel bag. He gathers his charger and phone, and gets as far as his thumb hovering over a text draft to Cas before he catches what he’s doing. Guilt and anger writhe in Dean’s gut. He shoves his cell into his back pocket instead.

It’s another warm one in Lebanon, the sun scratching up Dean’s neck through the driver side window, a restless energy burning right through him. Dean drums his nerves along the steering wheel, humming with the stereo turned low. The cloudless sky continues through the entire drive to North Dakota. Traffic remains low, though road construction tests his patience as soon as he crosses the I-90, and again just north of Bismarck.

Laying heavy on the gas, Dean arrives at city outskirts while the summer sun’s still dragging toward the horizon. He pulls over at a gas station before the outskirts, as Sam had instructed, feeling wrung out and exhausted but willing himself forward. He fills the tank and scans through his chat log, pausing again over the blurred messages, double-checking what Sam wants him to do next.

The quickest way to their meeting spot is straight through city proper, though Sam’s been extremely specific in where Dean is and isn’t allowed to drive. The city itself is off-limits, apparently, so a seven-mile strip of well-oiled highway turns into a double digit roundabout through bumpy backwoods roads, tacking an extra forty minutes onto his trip, easy. Dean might not get the logic behind the runaround, but he doubts Sam’s inconveniencing him for the hell of it.

Finally the route clears, and Dean finds himself completely turned around, moving toward the north end of the city. He signals onto the frontage road where the spade-shaped sign of the Midwest Vegas Motel proudly advertises its rates on a neon banner. Dean swings around the side of the motel and pulls into the far end of the parking lot. The asphalt is uneven, broken down to gravel. An overgrown strip of grass separates the motel from the Biggerson’s a stone’s throw away.

He spots Claire’s beat-up red monstrosity first, followed by Sam, Claire, and Patience sitting on the tailgate of Sam’s latest acquisition, an ageing F-150 with South Dakota plates. Dean parks in the nearest available spot, shuts off his baby, and climbs out with a crick in his back. He shakes out his shoulders and stretches his legs on the short walk over to meet them.

The girls are both decked out in jeans, Claire sporting her leather jacket and Patience in a light hoodie, while Sam totes his usual plaid-and-denim wear. They all look easygoing, sitting hunched over burgers, sauce dripping onto the wrappers flattened across their respective laps.

“So this is the dream team in action.” Dean twirls his keys around a finger, drops them into his hand. He dips his head to Sam, nods at the small wave Patience gives him, and greets Claire’s eye-roll with mock affront. “Got nothing in those bags for me?”

“Call in your order next time. We’ll think about it.” Claire crumples her burger wrapper and tosses it at him. Dean catches it on reflex, then palms the foil wad from hand to hand.

Sam cranes his neck toward the Impala, the gesture casual until it isn’t. “Cas isn’t with you?” he asks, his puzzled look turning back onto Dean.

Dean doesn’t want to think about that just yet. He clears his throat. “So, what’re you gonna show me?”

Patience dips her head and chews until her mouth is clear. “It’s the perimeter. Over there.” She points across the grass, beyond the trucks idling between them and the Biggerson’s.

Dean looks, but he can’t see anything specific that has her attention. There’s only the parking lot followed by an intersection, with cars driving around both. A cozy-looking family restaurant fills out the opposing corner lot, and another motel lies beyond it, and the city beyond that. Nothing seems out of the ordinary.

Dean makes a guess at what Patience means. “The kid went missing here?”

Patience frowns. “This isn’t a school.”

Claire rolls her eyes again, her snark dampened by the handful of fries she’s shoved into her mouth. With chipmunked cheeks, she wipes her hands and slips off the tailgate, motioning for Dean to follow. “C’mon, I’ll show you.”

Dean looks to Sam, questioning, but Sam gives a smug grin and continues chewing. An old throb of sibling rivalry strikes Dean then, so strong yet subtle that only those with thirty-odd years of experience with each other could ever scent it.

Dean squares his shoulders and bows elaborately toward Claire. “Lead the way.”

They march through the parking lot, tossing their trash as they cross by the Biggerson’s. Claire waits for traffic to clear before jaywalking across the intersection, heading for the family diner. Dean lags behind, an ache building in the back of his head.

Claire talks as she walks, keeping a clipped pace. “So as of this afternoon, we’re two days out from the AMBER Alert, alright? The radio was absolute chaos the day she went missing, local news reporting the kidnapper’s description and wild speculation, yada yada, when all of a sudden the chatter just _stopped_.”

“Dropped mid-sentence, Sam said,” Dean says, nodding. His head throbs with the gesture.

Claire nods back. “All web presence of the girl too—the hashtag, the conspiracy thread—it all just vanished. It was weird enough that Patience and I figured we’d swing by instead of heading straight home, but then we got here and, well…” She flaps her hands ahead of her. “You’ll see.”

Dean stumbles, though there’s nothing underfoot. He swears and returns his focus onto Claire: the back of her leather jacket, the cocky smile she lends him when she glances back, as if to confirm he’s still following.

Claire stops part-way past the diner, halting just as sweat breaks out across Dean’s brow. The ache in his skull is growing, sharp and so familiar that he briefly wonders whether his hangover is back somehow. Withdrawal, maybe, though Dean doubts a three-day binge amid a lifetime of drinking is enough to trigger such a thing.

Claire licks a finger and holds out her hand, waving it around as if checking on the weather. She grows sheepish beneath Dean’s stare. “I know, I know. But this part of the case changes with the wind.”

“Which part?”

“The complication,” she supplies vaguely. “Are you feeling it yet?”

“Maybe,” Dean grits out, though ‘it’ hasn’t been defined. He carries on past her, a tremor building in his thighs. His stomach feels heavy, queasy despite how he hasn’t eaten in hours. Dean shakes out his head, finds his eyes falling out of focus. He tries to concentrate on the motel’s sign but the colors wink out, his vision sparking the reds and blues into shades of gray.

“What is this?” Dean blurts, stumbling to a halt not six feet out from the family diner’s parking lot.

“The puke perimeter,” Claire calls cheerfully. “Patience got to name it, since she upchucked first when we crossed it.”

Dean moves in a slow circle, his hand fishing through the air. Despite the lack of breeze, his arm shakes like it’s being buffeted by a gale. Panic without a source builds within him, bile pushing up into the back of his throat. His heart thrums erratically in his chest.

“You’re out farther than even I could handle,” Claire warns behind him. “Better come back before you pass out.”

Dean turns, nodding, though his head continues bobbing without his control. He crocodile-weaves back the way he came, legs burning, sweat pouring down his back. His whole body is trembling by the time he makes it to her.

Claire catches him before he stumbles. “Damn. We were hoping you’d be exempt.”

Dean blurts out a noise that only makes it halfway toward English. It’s slightly less embarrassing than face-planting in a parking lot.

Claire walks them both back across the intersection and beyond, toward the Biggerson’s, at which point Dean’s nerves settle enough for him to stand upright on his own. He finds Claire hasn’t been entirely unaffected by whatever they’ve just crossed either: her skin shines with perspiration, and her eyes have sunken in her face, bruise-dark bags blooming around each socket. She’s laughing at him, though, so she can’t be feeling too rough.

“You’ve got blood in your teeth,” Dean tells her, motioning to his own face.

Claire seals her lips and runs her tongue around her mouth. Her nose wrinkles. “Gross.”

Dean waves behind them, back the way they came. “Is it just here? This… whatever it is?”

“The puke perimeter?” Claire gives a close-mouthed smile. “No, it covers a ton of the city. Sam and Patience are the ones with the maps.”

Huh. At least Sam’s city runaround makes sense now.

Dean looks behind him. Beyond the frontage road, cars drive at highway speeds into the city. People go in and out of the diner, the inn; customers mill around an auto shop even farther down the road. Dean purses his mouth. “But not everybody’s affected by it.”

“No,” Claire agrees. “And we’re not sure why.”

Patience calls out to them, once they’re back within earshot. She’s made herself comfortable inside the back bed of the truck, her legs crossed, picking through the remains of her curly fries. “Not fun, is it?”

Dean laughs, off-kilter enough that it comes out sounding brittle. “One way of putting it.” He looks between her and Sam, who has wandered over from where he was tossing the trash. “What’s causing it? Witchcraft?”

Shrugs all around. Sam says, “No idea. We can’t get very far into it before we have to turn back.”

“Is that why you’re eating here instead of from the mom-and-pop?” Dean thumbs over his shoulder, back toward the diner. He’d only managed a quick glance in as they walked by, but it seems more like their usual fare.

Sam nods. “The Midwest Vegas doesn’t live up to its namesake either.”

“That bad?” Dean asks.

“Ooh yeah,” both girls chime. With a gleeful grin, Claire adds, “Just you wait.”

“Great.” Dean shakes his head. “So if the kid doesn’t exist anymore, and we can’t get into the city to investigate, tell me again why I’m here?”

“We’re mapping the radius of effect,” Patience says. “Maybe there’s a weak spot somewhere in the perimeter that we can get past, start our research. We need as much help as we can get.”

“More legwork. Awesome.” Dean folds his hands over a feigned wound in his chest. “Glad to know what you think of me.”

Claire gently punches his shoulder. “Nobody escapes grunt work around here. Now, you still want that cheeseburger?”

As if on cue, Deans stomach roils.

 

* * *

 

Claire fields a phone call from Jody about the time the sun’s setting. She cracks an easy one-liner in lieu of salutations, though her laughter dies once Jody ramps into her say.

Dean glances up from a text Mary sent about the case she and Jack are working. He leans against the Impala, the corner of his eye kept on Patience, just to be sure she makes it into her and Claire’s room okay. “They expected back at Sioux Falls by now?”

Sam comes around the driver’s side, joining Dean in his leaning. “Claire didn’t tell her about finishing the first case, so Jody’s imposed nightly phone calls. Just to check in,” Sam adds, like the concept of constantly worrying about someone would somehow slip past Dean. “I don’t think Jody’s happy about Claire keeping Patience out here either.”

Claire paces with her cell pinned to her ear by her crooked shoulder, firing exasperated looks Dean’s way.

Dean shrugs. “No monsters, no body count. Doesn’t seem like too dangerous a case.”

“Yet,” Sam adds.

“Yet,” Dean agrees. Probably not the best rationale to follow, but it’s not like he has any grounds to argue. He’d have done the same thing at Claire’s age, regardless of what Sam or his dad thought about it.

Dean shuffles down the side of the Impala, nudging Sam with his shoulder. Sam moves aside, giving room for Dean to pull out his suit and duffel bag from where it'd been sandwiched into the backseat footwell. “You got a double?”

Sam gives a small grin. “Force of habit, I guess.”

“Works for me.” Dean hefts the duffel across one shoulder and slams the car shut behind him. He tosses Sam the keys, leaving him to grab the cooler from the trunk.

Inside, their room boasts a narrow layout that spans the full width of the motel’s side wing, all decked out in a gaudy casino theme. A couch and a two-seat table greet the main door, followed by an off-yellow kitchenette paired beside the bathroom. An archway splits the kitchenette from the back half of the room, which contains two neon blue beds and a dresser topped with a vaguely-outdated flatscreen.

A sliding glass door with its curtains pulled open fills the far wall, exposing a small patio overlooking a sparkling swimming pool. Dean dislikes how exposed the double entrance leaves them, but if this motel’s their top choice they’ll just have to take what they can get.

He drops his bag onto the unruffled bed and surveys the room. Clothes spill out from a pair of lounging chairs, and Sam’s laptop sits humming beside the TV, coated by reams of handwritten notes that're likewise scattered across the room. Charger cables snake out from heaps of discarded laundry, adding up to a minefield of tripping hazards every which way.

Dean kicks at a lump of shirts Sam left on the floor. “Dude, didn’t I teach you to clean up after yourself? Looks like Goodwill threw up in here.”

“What? Oh. Wait until you have to deal with the puke perimeter all day, see how well that pans out.” Sam wrinkles his nose and ambles around the room, shifting loose piles of laundry into a single lump on his bed. “I keep getting a fever from it, full-body sweats. Have to change clothes constantly.”

“Great. Looking forward to it,” Dean drawls. “You’re taking your own car tomorrow, right?”

“Ha, ha.”

Sam slides the glass door open, hauling the cooler out onto the patio. Dean strips off his jacket and follows, sidling into the folding chair opposite. Sam holds out a beer, blessedly still cold after the long haul. Dean snaps off the cap and takes a cool swig. The plastic chair creaks beneath him as he settles.

The night is warm, the breeze low and balmy; the sunset glimmers along the rippling surface of the pool. They sit for a bit, enjoying the evening, and then Sam brings them back onto the case, swapping motive and methodology as they drink. Dean stretches out his stiff legs and mostly listens while Sam goes over the usual suspects—somebody or something with access to the mystical, assuming the weird barrier is actually tied to the abduction and not some other odd mess keeping them from the city.

When they’ve danced around it enough, Dean draws a hand over his mouth and asks, point-blank, “Who d’you think took the kid?”

“Honestly?” Sam breathes in, full of purpose. “I think it’s something new.” He leans in, his chair squeaking. “Think about it. An attacker eight feet tall, out in broad daylight. Bending an entire city’s attention away like it’s nothing?” Sam shakes his head. “We’ve been doing this our whole lives and I’ve never read or heard of anything like this.”

“Wendigos get that big,” Dean offers, no heat behind it.

Sam nods, accepting the lukewarm attempt even as he side-steps away. “I keep coming back to something occult. The worshippers of a pagan deity? A witch? Golem, maybe?”

“Think we should call Aaron, see if he can find something? Max? Rowena?”

Sam shrugs. “We could.”

Dean nods, though they both know they’re grasping at straws. He sets aside his empty, debates the merit of grabbing another. His head throbs with a phantom headache, like it’s warning him away. From the corner of his eye he can see Sam mulling something, the glances he tosses Dean’s way revealing more than Sam likely intends. A sixth sense tells Dean a blow is coming, even as Sam contemplates the best way to soften it.

“Would Cas have any ideas?” Sam asks.

A pulled punch, then.

Dean snorts. “Hell, you can ask him. It’s not like I’m keeping him away.”

“Yeah, I just…”

“What?” Dean asks. “You just what?”

Sam winces. “I don’t want to make things uncomfortable.”

Dean laughs at that. He grabs that next bottle, the decision made for him. The cap twists off with a vicious hiss. “It’s already uncomfortable. Not much you could do to make it worse.”

Sam purses his mouth, sucking at a sour thought. He shuffles in his seat. Scratches at his neck. Dean stares blankly ahead, giving him nothing. The ground they’re treading is treacherous. One wrong step and Dean will bury himself in its grave.

Sam must sense it, enough to know it’s not just anger that’s driving Dean now, but some blend of hurt and guilt, the stubborn knowledge he’s not the only one in the wrong, but Sam—damnit, sometimes the kid can’t help himself. The need to know is just too great.

Sam leans in, a slow approach toward a rabid animal. “What happened? Because the night I left, I could tell something was different, but I thought—” He huffs. “I thought you’d tell him, and then things between you would be...”

“I know.” Dean stares out at the pool, the low hum of the filter drowned out by the pulse throbbing in his ears. “I don’t know. It just… went wrong.”

“But it doesn’t make sense,” Sam insists. “All this time leading up, you guys were—”

“I know,” Dean says again, cutting him off. He can’t handle hearing how it all should have been ‘fine’ one more time.

There’s nothing more to say, not if Dean refuses to make room for it, so Sam falls silent, nodding like it’s enough. “Yeah. Some things just mess up. But the two of you… He’ll come back.”

The way Sam says it, so certain and insistent… Dean chugs the last of his beer and pushes roughly out of his chair. He gathers his empties, making quick work of dropping them into the cooler, waving off Sam’s attempts to help.

The patio door is right there behind him, an easy escape. But Dean knows the sad look that'll come when Sam realizes Dean’s bailing because of something he said, and it’s a kick in the teeth neither of them needs right now. So Dean drags the cooler closer and fishes out a fresh bottle, playing off his whole fuck-up like he just needed the footrest. He takes a deep breath, cracks the cap and drinks.

He’s just so damn tired of hearing it’s okay that Cas leaves him, again, and again, and again.

 

* * *

 

Uncovering what happened to Abbie Lynn turns out to be trickier than any of them realized.

Their usual routine, for one—dress as Feds, question the cops, visit the witnesses—is next to impossible thanks to the nausea-inducing barrier around the city. The only county office that lies outside the weird perimeter is Water Resources, with runner-up status going to the Highway Department. The latter sits close enough to the perimeter that Claire wagers they could visit there in-person, provided they only hang out inside for ten minutes or less. Not that the highway cops would have any useful information.

The sheriff’s office and county records both sit smack dab in the middle of the city, as does the courthouse, the high school, and anywhere else they could visit for any sense of a lead. Dean makes calls into the sheriff’s office for records on all missing persons, but feigning law enforcement is tough when he can’t charm his way around with the flash of a fake badge.

They know the names of Abbie’s parents, and by proxy where she lived, but they have no details regarding where she spent her time or even who her friends might've been. Sam's called the house, but so far as the mother knows her only daughter is Libby, the younger sister mentioned during the AMBER Alert spiel.

There’s no witness list, no people of interest. Dean has nothing to go off from beyond the information stuck in the other three’s heads.

So they improvise. Sam hauls his computer to the girls’ motel room and they set up a makeshift HQ there, the TV turned on and the radio tuned low to the local NPR. Since they can’t write down or record anything about Abbie without it disappearing, they make up a game to help keep the details fresh in mind.

“Seven facts apiece,” Patience pronounces. “If we all keep track of seven separate details, we’ll have the majority of Abbie Lynn’s information locked inside our heads.”

“I wasn’t here for the firsthand,” Dean reminds her. “Somebody better tell me my seven.”

“How about this.” Claire extends her hand, palm up, and begins ticking down her fingers. “Abbie Lynn is sixteen years old and lives on 5th Avenue with her mom, stepdad, and a younger sister. Her dad lives out of state, and her mom sounded genuinely upset during the public plea put out for Abbie’s return. She’s quiet, but she gets good grades and was well liked at school. Nobody could explain why somebody would come after her, or why no one even tried to stop the abduction while it was happening.”

Nodding, Patience adds, “The news stations didn’t say anything about it, but social media was flooded by speculation under the hashtag WhoTookAbbie. There wasn’t one uniform account of what happened, but most of the eyewitnesses said the abductor was extremely tall and had their whole face masked by a hood—except for these huge yellow eyes. They said Abbie calmly followed this figure out from the school, but after the five-hour mark the hashtag vanished as well.”

“So that’s your story to remember,” Sam finishes.

Dean nods along, pushing the details into deep memory as they recite the additional information they all know about the case.

Once they finish, Patience pulls up the school’s directory and blueprints, and from there she determines the likely exit route from the cafeteria’s location. Sam hacks the traffic cameras nearby, though the footage he finds from the time period in question has been already wiped clean. There isn't even a chunk of video missing from the afternoon when Abbie was abducted.

They take turns reviewing the footage, but it’s as if the area around the school doesn’t even register properly, either on the screen or in their heads. Dean scrutinizes every second of the video, but it only gives him rapidly-building eyestrain and the vague feeling of having lost time.

“There has to be some sort of spell that could cause this,” Patience mutters, switching her internet searches onto the deep web. Claire sprawls out on the motel bed beside her, tapping away at her phone, researching as well.

It all helps, but the lack of leads—the lost digital records and the failed phone calls, the hobbled search radius and the Feds suits hanging uselessly in their closets—leaves Dean about ready to claw his way out of his skin. He paces until it grows too obvious, then makes a smarter choice and grabs his car keys instead.

“Goin’ scouting,” Dean calls to the room, though he doesn’t know why he bothers: everybody’s entrenched in their own separate screens.

Once inside the Impala, Dean waits with the key unturned in the ignition. Truthfully, he doesn’t feel like going hunting, not after a day spent fruitlessly circling this flyspeck of a city. Really, he just wants to sit behind the wheel with his phone in hand, to stare out at the rusty red sunset and wonder how the hell Cas could have left when he knew what was coming, when it was clear that Dean was building into telling him something important after the week they’d just had.

Dean stares down at his phone, the screen coming to life with the press of a button. His fingers twitch for a familiar contact, and without really intending to Dean finds himself checking again for messages from Cas.

They could use a hand here. Someone with knowledge of the ancient and indeterminable, of magic and monsters and everything in between. And they have someone out there, an ally with eons of experience, a friend who would be more than willing to help find a kidnapped kid.

Dean unlocks his phone again, moving against the nerves roiling in his gut. He forces the fear down and away, out of mind, and thumbs into Cas’ contact, a draft apology flitting quickly through his head.

Cas would be here in a heartbeat, if only Dean weren’t too cowardly to say what should’ve already been said.

Knuckles rap against the driver side window; Dean shoves his phone aside without a second glance. He finds Claire hunching against the car, gesturing for him to roll down the glass. She steps back once he leans an elbow out, and she asks, “D’you want backup for another fun game of ‘don’t vomit while driving’? 'Cause I’m kinda tired of staring at the same four walls.”

He’s not thrilled with the idea, but Claire’s crossed her arms and she’s rocking back on her heels, looking about as antsy as he feels, so Dean folds, waving her around to the passenger side. Besides, it would give him something to do. Something that will keep his phone out of his hands for the next hour or two.

Turning the ignition, Dean flashes Claire a plastered-on grin. “Where to first?”

 

* * *

 

The next morning, Claire opens a foot trail app on her phone and spreads out their makeshift map on the bench seat between them. Dean drives with an eye on the bag of sunflower seeds she’s systematically shucking, trying to ensure she’s not dropping shells into the footwell while also avoiding the ‘old man’ moniker Claire’s bound to bestow when she finds out that he cares.

The map, Claire says, is a product of Patience’s frustration, after the fourth time her puke perimeter notes magically vanished off the page. It’s a huge, grid-dotted sheet of paper filled with multi-colored lines that somehow represent the city. If they take turns drawing on the paper, playing like it’s just a game of dots and boxes, then the angular patterns they’ve created don’t seem to fade away.

Dean’s not an expert, not by a long shot, but when he squints and tilts his head just right, he can see how local landmarks might've made their way onto the paper, and he might just understand the weird, uneven scribbles of the puke perimeter criss-crossing over them. It’s a decent system, considering their limitations, and that Patience is neither interested nor trained in cartography, just stubborn enough to ensure her hard work isn’t wasted. Claire, however, doesn’t have the same enthusiasm for it, not when they’re on the road trying to get information down quick, so she gets around the information wipe by drawing digital foot trails down the streets where their stomachs flip.

They drive like the elderly down side streets and through the suburbs, their windows down while the day’s still early enough to pass them a cool breeze. Dean grinds his knuckles along the steering wheel, an eye kept out for back alley exits should they accidentally enter the boundary head-on. His stomach seems more sensitive to the perimeter than hers, acid reflux hitting him a block or more before Claire’s purported brush-ins.

“You’re turning too soon,” Claire chides through a mouthful of seeds, her gaze still fixed down on her phone.

“What does it matter if we’re a block out?” Dean argues.

Claire spits out the window, continues her tapping. “Patience cares, s’all.”

Dean bites his lip, trying to keep down the belch burning in his chest, the barrier working its way up through him.

When they disagree on a location, Dean pulls them over and Claire climbs out, walking around until she finds the puke perimeter with a little more finesse. Dean eyes the hazy horizon, the day marked out in a light gray blue above the trees between the buildings. She comes back looking shaky and pale, but Dean’s not enough of a gentleman to keep from teasing her over the shimmy in her walk, or the way she fumbles the door handle open. Beyond those occasions, he’s stuck fighting with Claire over the radio, the banter taking him straight back to those early years with Sam.

“Shotgun shuts her pie hole,” Dean warns again, swatting Claire’s hand away from the tuner. “So long as I’m driving you’re not picking the tape.”

“You still listen to tapes?” Claire scrunches her face. She shuffles around the front footwell until she finds the box of cassettes. “Oh god,” she says. “Tell me these aren’t 8-tracks.”

Dean glances over from where he’s driving, making a blind grab inside the box. “Here,” he says, fishing one out. “Put this one in, B-side up.”

Claire makes a show of blowing dust off the cassette, sighing loudly and asking where she can find the aux cord. Dean spends the next hour fending her off from plugging her phone into anything even remotely resembling a jack, followed by a brief squabble when she accidentally snags her charger inside an air vent.

“What’re you doing?” Dean asks, when her phone tapping comes too rapidly to relate to the trail app.

Claire snorts, her chin barely lifting off her chest. “Sam’s taken over the web hunt, so Patience is using Snapchat to schmooze her way in with the kids at Abbie’s school. Everybody’s flirting game is weak, though. I keep asking her to send me screens.”

Dean raises a brow. “She’s flirting for intel?”

“Like it’s hard.” Claire scoffs. “She’s just too subtle. I keep telling her boys are stupid. You need big declarations of sucking-face romance or they won’t recognize your interest.”

“Tell me about it,” Dean grumbles. A thought occurs. “She’s not meeting these boys alone, is she?”

“No, _Dad_ ,” Claire declares. “If it even happens, Sam can go as backup.”

“Oh. Well, good.”

Claire looks at Dean a little too knowingly. It makes him feel old again.

 

* * *

 

The third hour of rolling nausea just about does Dean in. He pulls over at a c-store under the guise of needing fuel, then pops inside, grabbing a bottle of antacids and an iced coffee to wash a handful down. The air conditioning inside the building is out, leaving the hapless attendant to sweat out the day’s heat between the cross-breeze of two competing fans. Dean catches a hint of the air current as he pays, the brief moment lifting the sweat from the back of his neck.

Outside, he shovels his change back into his wallet, his attention momentarily caught by the squealing kids biking past, rainbow slushies dripping condensation on their handlebars. Claire must've climbed out while the car was refueling, fetched the squeegee, and started scrubbing bug guts off the windshield, but she subsequently answered a phone call part way through, leaving the driver’s side conspicuously dirty.

Dean wipes at the moisture building on his brow, the sun baking him in broad waves. He finishes the windshield around the time Claire wanders back. “How’s Jody’s, now that Kaia and Patience moved in?”

Claire’s cheeks flush at the names, leaving Dean to wonder which one is the culprit. She ducks away as she gathers up her hair, tying it up and off her neck. “It’s fine, whatever. Patience frets like a mom over her visions, and Alex is obnoxious now that she’s got another ally in the house.”

Dean chuckles. “Figured those two would hit it off.”

“Yeah. It’s great.” Claire rolls her eyes, glances aside. “Patience is still working through her correspondence courses. Told her to take the summer off, but she insists on doing them.”

Dean glances up from shutting the gas lid. “She still going for a diploma?”

“Trying to.” Claire scoffs. “As if she and Alex are actually ever gonna be normal.”

“And Kaia?” Dean prompts.

The dam bursts without warning. “So annoying! Jody stuck her in my room, so now I have to share with this loner who never sets a foot outside the bedroom. Add in a psychic who just _knows_ I’m sneaking out before I even roll out of bed, and suddenly I’m in constant shit. Patience might not tell on me to Jody but she tells Alex, and then Kaia absolutely shreds my cover story when she—”

Claire continues complaining, but her cheeks are pink throughout.

Ah, Dean thinks. So that settles that.

 

* * *

 

Two days of further searching bring in next to no results. The puke perimeter shifts, information continues to not exist, and everyone they can think to ask doesn’t remember so much as Abbie Lynn’s name.

Dean calls the house, talks to the mom long enough to realize she’s exhausted by her second work shift and not up to humoring further calls from snoopy strangers. He also tries calling the people further out in her family tree, phoning in with excuses to get a bead on whether any relative outside of the state remembers having a niece, a granddaughter, a cousin. No one he talks to knows about Abbie, only Libby. The girl could grow up with no idea that her older sister even exists.

After the last relative hangs up, Dean scrubs his face, hard, taking a moment to collect himself. He reminds himself again of why they’re doing this, the seven facts he’s supposed to remember. She lives on 5th Avenue, which online maps show is a cozy alcove down-and-over from the center of the city. Her mom and stepdad take care of her, working multiple jobs to keep their children warm and fed. A sister, younger by a couple years. Both seem kinda shy, based off what he gleaned from the family conversations.

Abbie probably looked out for her younger sister. Tried to make Libby’s life easier. She would’ve been there for every milestone, every knee scrape and heartache as they grew up together.

Sixteen years of history is gone with her now, with nobody left behind to mourn the loss.

What stories, what small moments, have been wiped with her, never to be seen again?

Now that he’s on the thought, Dean can’t help but think about their own lives. His own life. On the road, always moving, a dozen-dozen identities to his name. His real self written off as dead. No permanent address that normal people can know of, no wide swath of happy family and friends.

He and Sam are the end of the Winchester line. No spouses. No kids to share their memories with. No way for Dean to pass that along, to move that history from one generation into another, to keep himself alive once he’s dead.

The depth of human history has convened to this moment, and when Dean’s gone there won’t even be a grave to show that he was there.

The hopelessness sets in, just a little.

Just another dead end.

 

* * *

 

Patience makes further inroads with Abbie’s classmates, now that Claire has wholeheartedly joined in yanking them around. They have more luck getting people to talk than Sam and Dean, since they’re both young and pretty, and teenage boys continue to be as stupid as Dean was at that age.

Sam looks up from his laptop, frowning at the girls’ giggling. “What’s so funny?”

Patience ducks her head into a pillow, and even then she hardly manages to stifle her laughter. Grinning, Claire rolls along the bed until she can hold the phone out within Sam’s reach. Sam takes it, then rolls his eyes at whatever he sees and forces it back into her hand.

Dean stares at his brother, waiting, so Sam heavily sighs and says, all vocal fry, “ _Ohmygod, Patience, Joey Sinclair wants in your pants in the woooorst way_.”

“Hey, be nice about Steph,” Patience says. “She’s the one vouching for me in the first place.”

She ends up convincing some of the classmates to meet with her outside the puke perimeter, and they end up choosing the south end supercenter as the place to be. Dean props up the flimsy excuse of a supply run in order to drive the whole gang over with her, which results in Claire calling shotgun and her phone blaring inharmoniously over Dean’s attempts to control the radio.

They drive with the windows rolled down, the afternoon sun beating down past sunglasses and shades. Dean weaves them through traffic and parks in the far lot despite everyone’s complaining, fending off their loud arguments with a promise that they’ll all suffer if the Impala gets even a scratch from this sea of shitty drivers. A foot outside the car and Dean starts sweating, the heat of the day slamming into him like a brick. He wonders by the color of the sky whether a storm might be rolling in.

They disperse before Patience heads in—Sam with his laptop to McDonald’s, Claire with her stolen credit cards to the shampoo aisle. Air conditioning blasts inside the main doors, caressing them like a curtain. Dean grabs a cart and hangs a couple rows back from Patience, his sunglasses on, but Patience merely wanders the aisles with half a dozen school kids in tow, the group of them laughing about whatever comments are being made about items on display.

“Can you imagine being that boring?” Claire says, sidling up beside Dean. Her arms are crossed, her face framed by an oversized pair of knock-off ray bans with the tags still attached. She pops her gum and gives him a cheeky grin. Dean takes the hint and pockets his own shades.

Returning to the McDonald’s, Dean orders quarter-pounder meals for himself and Sam and fills their fountain drinks. He drops the tray onto the table and slides into Sam’s booth between two boisterous families, coming to rest directly across from his brother. “What’s the good word, Sammy? The dark web spilling all its secrets yet?”

Sam sips at his drink without looking up from his laptop. “I think Claire’s onto something when she says it’s affected by the weather. I took a look at the routes you’ve been driving, checked how they’ve updated after Patience’s transcribing. The perimeter remains roughly the same shape, but it shifts with the direction the wind is blowing that day.”

“Awesome. So we wait for a Nor’easter to hit the Midwest, then haul ass into the county office?” Dean shakes his head, wipes ketchup off the corner of his mouth. “Doesn’t change the fact we won’t find anything when we get there. Every damn record’s been wiped out.”

“Yeah, about that.” Sam pushes aside the meal tray, making room for his laptop to turn around.

Dean looks up to find a hokey occult website staring back at him, complete with discount chakra readings. He frowns down at his burger, takes a bite. “Doesn’t this look a little Wiccan 101 for us?”

Sam rolls his eyes. “I got ahold of Charlie a couple days ago, got her to hand me off to Rowena. She put me onto a special brand of witchcraft, spells that can target a wide swath of people based on emotional or metaphysical planes. See, most magic happens with a specific target in mind, right?

Dean nods, still chewing. “Vengeance, love, whatever. Toss a hex bag your ex’s way and see what happens.”

“Right,” Sam agrees. “But with this kind of magic, the witch builds the spell into a token based off an index, some element on these higher planes. Anyone that matches that element gets hit by the spell’s effects, depending on the radius built into the token.”

“A radius?” Dean shakes his head. “Doesn’t explain how Abbie’s whole family forgot about her, even three states over. If we can stand here without puking, how’re they affected when they’re so far away?”

“No, that’s not—” Sam cuts himself off and tries again. “The spell to make people forget about Abbie is separate from the spell keeping us out of the city. They both center around the same idea, but one has a way bigger radius of effect.”

“So, what, you’re thinking some witch out there built a couple barriers based on an _emotion_?” Dean shakes his head. “What emotions do you and me and Patience have that everybody else doesn’t?”

“Again, it’s not always an emotion, it’s an _element_ on the higher planes.” Sam turns his laptop back around. “What do we all have in common, Dean? You, me, Patience and Claire.”

“We’re hunters,” Dean replies immediately.

“Exactly,” Sam says. “I’m thinking the token uses the fact we’re hunters to keep us away from anything we’d use to find out who did this. It’s also probably why we remember Abbie after everybody else forgot.”

That gives Dean pause. “If this is a spell, why wouldn’t every dimestore witch be sticking out these citronella candles? Seems like a damn fine way to keep hunters at bay.”

“I know, I don’t get it either. But if it’s not a witch, then it’s something that might be using a similar idea.” Sam pauses. “I tried Rowena again, but she’s dropped off the grid. I’m wondering if Max might be able to help us instead.”

Dean shrugs. “Sure, call up Max if you really want a second opinion. But he’s a hunter too, man. You really think it’s gonna make a difference?”

Sam’s brows lift. “You’re giving up?”

Dean shrugs again. “I’m just saying we got a better chance of finding Bill Carson’s gold cache than this kid. We can’t hit records online or in-person. Nobody except the four of us even knows this girl exists. I don’t know about you, but all I’m seeing are dead ends here.”

Sam scoffs. “Didn’t take you for a quitter.”

“I’m not,” Dean insists. “Just, if this thing’s keeping out hunters and neuralyzing everybody else, there’s not much we can do.”

Sam folds his hands over his head and blows out a long breath. The moment hangs dead between them. Dean keeps his head down and finishes his burger, chewing away in silence. He doesn’t meet Sam’s eye, not even when Sam says, “I’m going to call Max. Whether he can help or not, it’s probably a good idea to see what he thinks.”

“You do you,” Dean replies, his gaze kept away. He shoves the last of his fries into his mouth and wipes his hands against his jeans, shuffling himself out from the booth. “S’cuse me, need to use the little girl’s room.”

“You do you,” Sam repeats back to him, his gaze fixed on the screen.

Around the corner, out of sight, Dean lets his shoulders fall. It’s been a while since he last disappointed Sam, but it happens often enough that he should be used to it by now. He stretches out his neck, wondering whether an extra hour in bed would have relieved any of his current frustration, or if it’s just the way things are now that over a week has passed since Cas left and his phone still hasn’t rang.

The case is really starting to feel like a dream. Dean wasn’t there to see the kid’s face or take in the information for himself. For all he knows—for all it feels like—this could be an elaborate prank he’s bought into. Driving around the barrier, mapping the thing, keeping only half-assed details in their heads—Dean can recite his seven details but it’s only a list now, not a person. Just another gaggle of facts to pull out on trivia night.

Dean lingers by the water fountain, wandering by customer service on his way out the door. His gaze snags on the missing persons flyers hanging from a poster board, the rows of smiling young faces, the names and dates and years that have passed since they all were last seen. Dean counts them on a whim.

Twenty-six posters.

Twenty-six kids.

Twenty-six families that have been left hanging, perpetually wondering what happened to that gap-tooth grin or bowl-cut that they used to tuck into bed. They’ll never know whether little Tommy ever really needed those braces they were trying to save for, or if Suzie ever grew into those ears. Answers will never come for these kids or their loved ones. Time got up and left them all behind.

Dean and Sam and the girls, they’ve got a kid that no one knows about, one that nobody else even knows has disappeared. All the details they remember about Abbie, those broad strokes that define a person, they’re all but extinct now. Four hunters are all she has to keep her memory.

No one but them will ever figure out a way to get Abbie back.

Sighing, Dean digs out his phone and begins drafting a text to Max.

 

* * *

 

That night, back at the motel, Dean’s phone starts ringing about an hour after midnight.

It cuts off the dream he’s been having, the one that had clung to him the whole way through his three-day bender, a favorite punishment he revisits again and again. That goddamn lie of a week leading up to Dean’s thwarted confession. Dean with his nerves singing wildly—circling in closer, standing there longer, daring to let his touch linger—and Cas…

Dean dreams of a Cas that actually stays.

It takes Dean a second to adjust to waking, his mind lagging behind even as his hand follows the charger cable up to the nightstand. Dean squints at the screen of his cell phone, sparing it less than a second before jamming it against his ear. “Cas?” he blurts unthinkingly.

“Just me,” Mary says. “Sorry for the hour, but mind me picking your brain for a minute? We’re on a deadline here.”

His heart still pounding, Dean swallows down his despair. He glances to Sam’s side of the room, then makes the split-second decision to haul ass over to the patio door. He shuffles quietly outside, bare feet slapping concrete, his arm hair lifting in the cool night breeze. His throat is too tight as he says, “What happened?”

Mary fills him in on what she and Jack have been doing, the werewolf case in Wichita that turned into a month-long ghosthunting road trip through Oklahoma and Arkansas. The latest spook was cremated, its home demolished, yet once a week it attacks a random victim in town at three a.m. Dean scrubs at his memory for what else the spirit could be attached to when its bones and belongings are no longer an option, and between the two of them they scrape together a handful of leads.

When they wrap up, Mary haltingly asks, “So what are you up to, are you still back at the bunker?”

She tacks the question on like a courtesy, so Dean keeps it simple, avoiding the in-depth conversation it could muster. He pushes a smile into his voice. “Nah, back out on the road with Sam. We’re helping Claire with something a little weird, so we won’t be home for awhile yet.”

“Oh. Well, stay safe then.” A beat of static hits the air.

Dean nods, more in kinship with her discomfort than out of agreement. “We will. ‘Night, Mom.”

“Goodnight, Dean.”

Dean hangs up. He shuts his eyes and presses the cell briefly against his forehead, willing things to just be easy for once. The night breeze cuts into him, making him shiver. He returns to his room, shutting the curtains against the silver moon.

Though the lights remain off when he gets in, Dean can tell that Sam is awake now. Dean pauses, feeling caught-out. He forces the feeling loose and, padding across the room, climbs back into bed. Sam can avoid sleep as long as he wants to, but Dean would rather rejoin the dreams that continue to haunt his bed.

“You still haven’t heard from Cas?” Sam whispers, just as Dean’s settled comfortably against his pillow.

“Shut up and sleep,” Dean mumbles.

“Can’t. I keep thinking about the case.”

Sighing, Dean shuffles around, slouching up against the headboard. He turns on the nightstand lamp, finds Sam already propped up against his headboard too.

“Do you really want to give up?” Sam asks, so quiet it sends a shiver through Dean. “I looked up abduction statistics. D’you know the odds for cases like Abbie’s?” Sam takes a breath. “In the first three hours, seventy-five percent of the kids are killed. After twenty-four hours, the odds rise to _ninety_.”

Dean sits quietly, listening to his brother's deepened breathing, waiting for Sam to resettle. Sam takes a long moment before speaking again.

“I mean,” Sam continues, voice thick, even as he forces it to remain light, “if we want to be fatalistic about it, no one even knows that something happened to her. We could walk away and nobody would be worse for it.” He scoffs, his expression crumpling. “We can’t even write down her name.”

“Yeah,” Dean says. “Yeah, I know.”

The world might have forgotten, but they will remember. Dean knows this; even years later, Abbie’s name will haunt them. Dean opens his mouth, reconsiders. He gets his thoughts in line before trying again. “If we stop, it’ll be as good as Abbie never existing. And even if some people can handle that fact, that guilt will stick to us for the rest of our lives.” Dean swallows thickly. “Even if she’s dead, someone should be looking out for her. The kid ain’t gone until we quit.”

Sam nods along, though his expression remains mournful. He scrubs his face, breathing hard for a moment. When he looks to Dean, he doesn’t pull the punch this time. “I called Cas. Couple hours ago. He’s on his way.”

Dean fights down the instinct to flinch, knowing that odds are Sam already heard how he answered Mary’s call, that he’s been privy to years of the mewling desperation that creeps through Dean the moment he thinks Cas might be near.

Dean knows he should agree, that he should force himself to tell Sam that it’s okay—involving Cas was a long time coming, overdue only because of Dean. But instead of all that, Dean only spits out, “So what exactly is Cas gonna do that we haven’t already done?”

Sam shrugs listlessly. “I dunno, but we owe it to Abbie to try everything before calling it, don’t we?”

Eventually, Dean nods. He wouldn’t dare argue with that. “So we’ll see him when we see him. That’s fine by me.”

Sam can sense something’s off with him. Dean senses it in Sam too, can all but hear him rifling around for the right words to say. Gently, Sam asks, “Whatever went down with Cas… Should I keep between you when he gets here?”

Huh. Should he? Was what happened really that bad?

Dean pours that cold thought through him, lets it stiffen his spine. He forces all emotion out from his mind, from his body. Keeps his voice warm and smooth as he says, “Nah. No. Don’t worry about it.”

“Dean…”

“It’s nothing, Sammy,” Dean insists. “Just something over nothing. Just spent so much time working up to it that we ended up fighting instead. And when I came back, Cas had already left, so,” Dean finishes, shrugging. “Nothing big, in the grand scheme.”

Sam says something then, but it’s lost in the pulse pounding in Dean’s ears. Dean sags, the whole situation weighing on him more than he ever wanted, the outcome he never expected hitting him like a train.

Dean has spent his time pretending like the empty days aren’t eating through him, that the work and the people around him are enough to fill the Cas-shaped hole bleeding in his chest. Not that he’s ungrateful. He knows he lucked out, just this once, in finding a best friend in Cas. He just wishes his luck had stretched a little further, come in a little stronger. That all those years of tiptoeing around his feelings for Cas had amounted to something in the end.

He just wants to know that Cas needs him as badly as Dean needs him. Needs to know that he means something to Cas, even if it’s not in the same way Dean wants it to be.

But Cas hasn’t called. Hasn’t contacted Sam or any of their friends about him. Hasn’t tried to check up on Dean. Cas just left, and he’s had a decent enough time away from Dean that he has no reason yet to cave.

It feels a little like Dean’s easy to move on from. Easy to forget. Each time Dean thinks about it, it makes him want to wait a little longer, because suddenly it’s important that Cas be the one to reach out to him.

He doesn’t say this, though. Just lets Sam’s ‘you’ll make amends’ talk wash over him, nodding along because Dean gets it, he really does, he just wishes it were different. If he keeps waiting, it might be different.

Sam must know that Dean’s tuning him out because he stops talking. They rest in the quiet together, and when Dean turns off the lamp, Sam allows it.

Dean rustles around, punching his pillow back into shape. Before he turns in for good, Sam says, “Dean, just so you know… if you want, I can manage the smalltalk with Cas.”

Dean’s shoulders loosen, embracing the small mercy Sam offers with the gesture. “Thanks, Sam.”

They might not be able to make a dent in this case, but that won’t stop them from scratching every last surface on the way out.

 

* * *

 

The following day, Dean drives Patience out along the path of the perimeter, swinging a slow route clockwise around the city. Construction along 16th Street SW means they’re crawling north at a snail’s pace, the street fenced in by stuffy residential blocks. Kids shout and run around their front yards, through the slip-and-slides and sprinklers nipping at the afternoon heat. Dean’s half-tempted to pull over at a lemonade stand up ahead, slumped in the shade of a couple heavy oak trees.

Patience huffs and readjusts in her seat, her sighs audible above the commercials jangling on the radio and the road noise coming from the street. Dean chances a glance over and finds her scribbling something onto the margins of their grid map, her brows rigidly drawn together.

Dean leans back, looking at her in full. “Problem?”

Patience’s gaze flickers over to him, though her attention quickly drops back to the map. She scoffs. “The barrier changed again, and not in the way I predicted. Taking into account today’s forecast, there should’ve been only a half-block shift southwest. But this route... We have a whole new section of the barrier bulging out from the original, festering like a _boil_ —”

“Whoa, whoa.” Dean slashes his hand. “Okay, one: don’t ever say boil. Two: what d’you mean, there’s a new section? The puke perimeter’s just started—”

“Growing,” Patience finishes, a fragile note entering her voice. “Sometime since the last time we traced it, it’s totally changed and I don’t know why.” The map’s edge warps beneath her tightening fist. “And I _still_ haven’t had a vision, I’ve done _nothing_ that could actually help us—”

“Hey, hey,” Dean says, unsure how to soothe the sting. “You know it’s not your fault this stuff makes no sense, right? The whole goddamn case is a mess. If it weren’t for you and Sammy, we’d have no idea what’s been happening. The mapping, the ‘seven-fact’ game? That’s all been you. Nobody’s expecting miracles here anyway.”

Patience rolls her eyes. “Maybe. But it’s not just that. It’s…”

Whatever it is, she’s reluctant to say. Dean bides his time, inching the Impala forward through traffic, pushing through the congested intersection at last. They drive a few blocks in silence. Dean glances over once they’ve hit a standstill at a red light ahead. “Patience?”

Tilting back her head, Patience sighs. “We’re losing ground. Whatever’s causing the barrier is growing, and we have no way of stopping it, or even tracking it down.”

Dean’s never heard her sound so defeated. Once the light turns green Dean pulls over, the Impala left idling so they won't melt without the air conditioning. He turns down the radio and then reaches for the map. “Alright, go over it with me. Where did this stuff change?”

Patience narrows her gaze, suspicious that Dean is only humoring her.

Dean shakes the paper in emphasis, brows artfully raised.

Sighing, Patience takes the map and smooths it along the seat between them. She points out a place within the gray line of the perimeter. “Here. And here,” she adds, moving her finger north of the first point. “There used to be more blocks accessible to the section we just passed by. Then over here—” south, not far from the area they had just been through “—it’s not necessarily growing, but it’s changing weirdly. There are whole u-bend swaths of the city being eaten up—”

The radio blares sudden emergency sirens, jolting them both in their seats. Dean’s heart pounds as the alert fires. He turns up the volume on the radio:

_The following message has been transmitted at the request of the North Dakota Department of Public Safety. This is an AMBER Alert. At 10:46 AM Central Daylight Time, a teenage girl was taken from her home on 5th Avenue. The girl is believed to be fourteen year old Liberty Lynn. She is five feet four inches tall, white skin, weighs one hundred and thirty four pounds, and has brown hair and brown eyes. She was last seen wearing—_

“Libby,” Patience breathes.

“Holy shit,” Dean says.

Patience’s phone rings about the same time that Dean’s begins vibrating in his pocket. He fumbles to pull it out. “Sam,” Dean declares, looking at the screen.

“Claire,” Patience agrees.

“You answer,” Dean tells her, tossing down his phone before reaching for the gearshift. “I’ll drive.”

 

* * *

 

They meet at the girls’ motel room, where Sam and Claire already have the TV on and their laptops open. Dean swings the door in wildly, sending reams of handwritten notes fluttering around the room.

“I’ve got the traffic cameras up,” Sam says as Dean leans over his shoulder, staring down at the laptop on the dinette table. Sam opens a square of the camera grid, the view revealing the main drag down Broadway. It isn’t the focus of the camera, but on the frontage road beside the strip, a girl and a robed being nearly twice her height walk calmly down the road together. The angle is too far away to get a decent look at the figure's face, but its yellow eyes are apparent even at a distance, and from the shape of its hood Dean thinks it might have horns.

Dean wipes his mouth, his hand lingering. “Fuck.”

“Yeah. Just wait until you see the next angle.” Sam minimizes the current view and switches to another. It’s the same road, now from the direction of the cameras pointing southbound. This time, from behind the creature, Dean can see another two people walking with them, a boy with dark brown hair, and a taller girl with dirty blonde.

“Is that—” Patience begins, eyes widening.

“Yeah,” Claire answers, sitting up from her paper-laden perch on the couch. “Yeah. It’s totally Abbie.”

“Or something that looks like her,” Sam adds.

“Oh my god,” Patience says. She looks to Dean. “This changes everything, doesn’t it? Like, who is this guy, why is Abbie with them, is she—”

“Is she a hostage or an accomplice?” Sam turns in his seat, catching Dean’s eye. “The news still only mentions one abductor. I don’t know whether that means they can’t see Abbie and this other guy, or if the deputies are choosing not to release the information, but either way it doesn’t add up.”

Dean shakes his head. “If we can see them on the cameras, then why wouldn’t the cops also see them?”

“I don’t know,” Sam breathes, pushing back his hair. “I don’t know. I’m just grabbing all the information we can get before the wipe happens.”

“Speaking of,” Dean says, “how long do we got? If she was taken before noon and the wipe happens after five hours, then—”

“An hour,” Claire answers, her attention back on her laptop. “We’ve got maybe an hour left before Libby disappears too.”

“Awesome.” Two sisters, both taken—maybe voluntarily—by the same thing. Dean shakes his head. “This creature on the footage, what is it? Can we find something like it online, or are its details erased too?”

“I’ve been trying to look into it,” Sam answers, “but the cameras came first.”

Dean claps his hands together. “Alright. Claire and Patience, you’ve got social media covered, right? Sam, you get looking into monsters that match the video of that thing. I’ll take over whatever you’re doing with the feeds.” Dean slaps his brother’s shoulder as he rises. They swap places at the dinette, and Sam goes to fetch Dean’s old laptop from their room.

Dean half-listens to the TV, half-focuses on the creature’s route over the traffic cameras. Claire and Patience spread their gear across both beds and start memorizing all they can from social media, everything from commentary about the kidnappers to the lists of Libby’s online friends.

They’re on borrowed time, all of them, just trying to memorize what they can. Dean saves key screenshots of the footage and makes handwritten notes about the abductor, trying to come up with a shorthand code that maybe won’t get erased, even if nothing they’ve tried has worked so far. He switches focus to the television when the local news starts up a special report on the abduction, and he’s on such high alert about it that he almost misses the knock on the front door.

With an ear tuned to the TV, Dean crosses the front room, opens the door, and finds himself face-to-face with Cas.

There’s a moment where the air between them hangs electric, where Dean forgets that he’s angry and he hangs on the cusp of a bright, involuntary smile. But then Dean’s brain kicks in and he remembers. His gut sinks, forcing the instinctive happiness down and far, far away.

Cas shifts around, awkward. He meets Dean’s eye, then looks aside. His voice is low and raspy, unused. “Sam told me to meet him here.”

Dean remains in the doorway, his whole body feeling adrift. He forces himself to nod. “Yeah. Yeah, okay.” He steps aside and flaps his arm, directing Cas inside.

Cas wanders past the kitchenette, heading toward Claire and Patience and the piles of paper on the beds between them. He quietly greets them both, receiving mumbled greetings in reply. Stepping over discarded notepads, Cas turns in place, frowning. “What happened? You all seem stressed.”

“Second kid went missing today. Sister to the first.” Dean clears his throat. “Did Sam give you any names?”

Cas nods. “Abigail Lynn.”

“Okay, good. You remember.”

Cas frowns again. “Why wouldn’t I?”

In spite of himself, Dean smiles. “You wouldn’t believe.”

Dean gives a rough rundown of what they know so far, all the while angling Cas over to the laptop. Cas sits down at the dinette and reviews the footage Dean pulls up, his chin perched on his palm, fingers brushing over his lips. He taps between the different cameras, observing the abductor from various angles.

Cas hums at the screen. “I’m not certain what creature that might be. The image reminds me of something, but I’m not sure of what exactly.”

“Awesome. Good lead.” The footage fuzzes out on the latest angle, briefly blanking out. Dean frowns at it, hitting the heel of his palm into the base of the laptop. It scrambles again. “Huh. It wasn’t doing that before.”

Patience hangs her head off the bed and calls out to them from the bedroom. “Social media’s starting to blank out. I think we’re running out of time.”

Cas rises from the table. “I’ll drive down to that location, see if I can uncover any answers.”

“Wait, what? Oh no. No, no, no.” Dean holds out his hands, barring Cas from the door. “Did you notice the address of those streets? They’re all well within the puke perimeter.”

“The… puke perimeter?” Cas quirks his head, squinting.

Dean is endeared, just for a moment. He punches that feeling down. “Yeah, see—look.” He walks Cas back to the bedroom again, this time to fetch the grid map. Dean smooths the wrinkles out from the paper, flattening it along the kitchenette cabinet. “We’re here, right? And the footage, that’s there.” Dean swipes his finger along the gray line of the perimeter. “Can’t cross this without getting sick.”

It’s a simple explanation, but Cas keeps frowning. “I don’t understand. The main bulk of the city is inaccessible?”

Claire’s eye-roll carries in her voice. “Uh, yeah, that’s what he’s saying.”

Cas takes the map from Dean, examining it closely. “These red lines, they’re the main roads?” Cas drags his long fingers up the bulk of Broadway. “I drove past there to get here, maybe half an hour ago.”

“What? No.” Patience shakes her head. “It shouldn’t be possible.”

Cas’ jaw tightens, the corners of his mouth tilting down. He looks to Dean as if for support, then remembers himself. “If it’s impossible, then how was I able to drive here directly along the 83?”

That… Dean doesn’t know how to answer that. He looks to Patience, then Claire, but both of them look equally stunned.

The front door rattles with a key. Sam nudges the door open, then kicks it closed behind him.

“Hey,” Sam says, Dean’s laptop balanced on one arm, his free hand laden with a stack of printer paper. “So get this—the local area’s been heavily pioneered by Scandinavians, right? Well, I found something about these creatures called the skogsra, so I printed them off—oh, hey Cas—from the lobby. They’re seductresses of the forest, and skilled in magic and illusion—”

“Sam,” Dean says, cutting him off. Sam looks up from his screen, puzzled. Dean purses his mouth and points at Cas. “He says he drove through the puke perimeter to get to us. Straight down the middle.”

“What?” Sam frowns, looking from Cas to Patience. “But that doesn’t match what we know about the tokens. It should be keeping all hunters out from—”

“I’m not a hunter,” Cas says archly. “I’m an angel.”

"Yeah, but—”

“Sam,” Claire says sharply. “Dude. We might’ve actually caught a break here.”

The TV clicks over in that moment, so abrupt that even Cas is taken aback. The reporters halt mid-thought, the air hanging dead for a solid three seconds. Then the heated discussion about the abductor slides away, the topic switching over to the regularly scheduled news program. The newscasters discuss the weekend weather forecast in chipper tones.

The five of them look toward the television, then to each other.

All traces of Libby Lynn’s existence have now officially disappeared.

 

* * *

 

Hours later, while Claire and Patience are busy summarizing what went missing from their notes, and Sam has reneged on his promise to play buffer and is focusing on the skogsra instead, Dean ends up the only one available to drive Cas out to the perimeter. Dean motions Cas out the door and keeps his mouth shut despite his displeasure at the task, preferring that the girls remain in the dark about the daytime drama currently unfolding. He’s not sure how Claire would take it anyway, knowing that Dean’s miffed the guy who looks like her dad isn’t willing to jump his bones.

This close to twilight, Dean keeps the drive simple and picks a suburban area on the northwest end of the city, one of the few places along the perimeter that seldom fluctuates. He makes a point of not speaking, keeping the radio turned up and his gaze trained on the road ahead.

Cas’ phone blips. He pulls it from his pocket and cycles through its screens.

Dean eyes him, clicking his tongue. “Huh.”

“What?”

“Nothing.” Dean puts on an insufferable pout. “Just wasn’t sure your phone actually works.”

“Of course,” Cas says, one brow lifting. “Does yours?”

Dean stares ahead again, dimples drawn into the corners of his mouth.

They drive past a nail salon and a Dollar Tree, then take a left down a narrow road leading onto a long side street. Dean parks a block back from where he’s expecting the perimeter, climbs out, and gruffly motions for Cas to follow. They hike down a road lined with boxy beige houses, the suburb so new that half a dozen For Sale signs still litter the lawns, and the spindly poplar trees planted along the sidewalk still have their nursery tags.

Dean walks right up to the last few inches of comfort and pauses, bracing himself before pushing past. The headache begins, same as usual. Dean walks toward the empty intersection ahead, within the perimeter, and motions vaguely across the street. “Here. It gets a lot stronger starting here.”

Cas comes up to Dean slowly, scanning the area with a squint. A breath shudders out from Dean, partly from the perimeter, partly from proximity. He wipes at the sweat forming on his brow.

Cas turns his gaze back to Dean. He holds up two fingers. “Let me try.”

Dean wants to be petty and tell him no, he doesn’t need anything from Cas, but gathering intel is the whole point of this trip so they may as well test this too. Dean closes his eyes and purses his lips, shaking out his shoulders in preparation for the incoming spike of icy-hot grace.

Cas rests his fingers against Dean’s brow, the touch lingering a moment longer than normal. When he pulls away, Dean doesn’t feel any different. His legs continue to visibly tremor, his vision blurring and beginning to fritz.

Dean shakes his head, stumbling back. “Yeah, no. I’m out.” He jogs on jelly-legs back outside the perimeter and plops down onto the curb a safe distance away, blinking rapidly as he waits for his head to clear. The streetlight beside him flickers on with the approaching dusk.

Cas watches him, quiet, caught in the same silence that had crowded in on them in the Impala, the air so tight with tension that Dean could barely breathe. Dean can’t stand the way Cas looks at him, so he tents his legs and folds his arms atop his knees, tucking away his face. He breathes loosely into the shadow of his arms, watching his vision spark while the tremors slowly fade.

While Dean recovers, Cas continues to cross the intersection, taking careful steps past where he memorized Dean’s last position. He keeps calmly marching forward, walking toward a flower garden at the corner curb, where begonias and hydrangeas grow neatly inside a low brick retaining wall.

“I don’t feel any different,” Cas calls out.

“Lucky you,” Dean grumbles back. He keeps his thumbs jammed into the inner corners of his eyes, the pressure soothing against the ache in his forehead. When he chances a glance, he finds Cas seated on the park bench beside the flower garden, directly across the street from Dean.

The corner of Cas’ mouth lilts when he notices Dean looking. He lifts a hand from his knee and gives a small wave.

It should have been sweet, but Dean gets heartsick at the sight of it. He forces himself to his feet and waves for Cas to come back. “Are you good?”

Cas frowns. “I already said it doesn’t affect—”

“I mean, are you satisfied, now that you’ve seen it?”

Cas shrugs. His hand fidgets against his thigh. “What work should I do for you now?”

 

* * *

 

The calls to the courthouse and county office come easier now that they have an agent to collect paperwork in-person. Sam puts in a request for documentation involving missing persons cases in the county, and Cas comes back to the motel with armfuls of intel spanning the past forty years. Patience organizes the records in order of occurrence and begins building a spreadsheet of basic details, looking for any patterns that crop up between the victims in the past two, five, and twenty years.

“Most of the missing persons here don’t follow the same pattern as Abbie or Libby,” Sam begrudgingly admits, tossing aside another file. “There’ve been only two records of abductions by a stranger, and only one of those involved a victim in her teens. Everybody in the Lynn sisters’ age range presumably either ran away or were taken by a family member or friend.”

“Except this one girl,” Claire says, flipping through a stack of paper. “Rebecca Maurier, age fifteen. She disappeared fourteen years ago, a self-proclaimed runaway. She was gone for about a week before coming home again.”

Cas reaches for Claire’s file, frowning. “A runaway doesn’t match the case.”

“No, but Rebecca’s alleged kidnapping does.” Claire drops the file onto the dinette in front of Cas, flipping through to a particular page, then stabbing the paper with her finger. “See, right here. When Rebecca came back, she claimed she hadn’t actually run away, she was just trying to find the people who stole her before. She said this was the second time her mom filed a missing persons report on her, that the first time came after she was gone for two days. But the police in this report say there’s no such filing on record, and Maurier’s mom says she has no memory of Rebecca ever going missing before that.”

Dean comes around the side of the table, resting his knuckles against the file. “Someone took her for two days, then gave her back. Then she goes to try and find them again?” He shakes his head. “Doesn’t make sense.”

“Exactly,” Claire says. “Nothing corroborates her story, but at the time she insisted it was real. So now, if we saw Abbie walking alongside this skogsra—”

Cas shakes his head. “This isn’t a skogsra. They lure adults who cross their paths to their deaths, not seek out and steal children.”

“Whatever it is,” Sam says diplomatically, “Abbie seemed calm as it led her and Libby down the street.”

Dean snaps his fingers. “They were heading south along Broadway. What’re the odds it was taking them out of the city?”

“I’d say pretty damn high,” Sam says.

“That would mean crossing the perimeter,” Cas reminds them. “If they’re safe from hunters within the city, why leave it?”

“Who knows,” Dean says, “but if this girl was taken by the same creature fourteen years ago, she might have some answers. Anybody know where this Rebecca lives?”

“On it,” Patience and Claire answer in unison, tapping away at their separate screens.

Dean nods, definitive. “Alright, so we’ll find her and see what she knows.”

 

* * *

 

It turns out that Rebecca lives above a boutique shop that she runs downtown, and when Cas goes to meet her she has absolutely nothing useful to say.

At least, that’s what Dean gleans from his brother’s phone conversation with Cas, Sam frowning out at the street ahead as he continues nodding along, listening to Cas blab in his ear. Dean debates pulling over into the nearest parking lot, just so he can eavesdrop a little easier, but he crushes the impulse and keeps the Impala on the straight and narrow, winding them around the eastern edge of the city instead.

“She doesn’t remember anything about her kidnappers,” Sam announces as soon as he hangs up. “Cas says she just confirmed the story in the file. She was fifteen and got lost in the fields outside of her aunt’s farm, couple miles south of the city. Lost a day or so from her memory and threw her family into a tizzy, at least until she somehow found herself home again. The next day nobody even remembered that she had gone missing. Rebecca figured she’d gone crazy, so she went out searching for whatever thing took her, but gave up within a week and came back.”

Dean puts on his turn signal, avoiding the presumed perimeter up ahead. “Doesn’t sound like it fits the pattern.”

“No,” Sam admits. “But the memory loss, the family not remembering Rebecca saying she was going on this search? That fits. So maybe she only seemed like the right target for the abductor, right up until it realized she wasn’t.”

“She didn’t fit so the creature that stole her… gave her back?” Dean shakes his head. “Seems like a lot of effort for nothing.”

“Abbie’s still alive so far,” Sam says. “Maybe this thing’s not looking to kill its targets.”

Dean hasn’t made his mind up about that yet. “So give Patience a call, let her and Claire know we’re looking for some kind of selective kidnapper. And call Cas too, let him know the details.”

“You sure you don’t want to call him?”

Dean glances over, finds Sam’s expression translates somewhere between _I’m not your secretary_ and _have you two really not talked yet_. Dean purses his mouth so tight his dimples form. Sam softens immediately, his bitch face breaking. Dean lets the sour moment dissipate and die.

“So do you think we should check out that aunt’s house?” Sam asks finally.

Dean shrugs. “Not like we have much better to do.”

 

* * *

 

En route to the motel, Dean’s phone starts ringing. He digs it out from his pocket and tosses it to Sam, who puts it on speaker and holds it out between them.

“Hey Dean! It’s Max. I’m just east on 52, uh, maybe five miles out, and the end cannot come soon enough. I’ve been—”

“Wait, Max—you’re coming _here_?” Sam looks to Dean, bewildered.

“—and do you know how many corn fields there are between North Dakota and Minnesota? Because, uh, let me tell you, there’s—”

Max drops off suddenly, his voice coming through muffled. The phone begins to ping just as another voice muddies Max’s on the other end of the line.

“Is someone else calling?” Dean asks, glancing between Sam and the road.

“It’s Patience, she’s texting—hey Max?” Sam swipes away Patience’s messages, then brings the phone to his ear, then stares down at the speakerphone again. “Max, you there?”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m here,” Max says. “What’s going on? I’ve been sensing something since maybe ten miles out—”

“Who’s with you? _Max_ —”

Dean makes a wild swipe for the phone, earning an angry stream of honking from the driver in the next lane. Dean flips the guy off and brings the phone around. “Max, stop talking and listen. Where exactly are you?”

“Sorry, okay,” Max says, obliging. The second voice hushes, and Max says, “Uhh, we just passed this campground and an RV park. Where d’you want to meet? Also, I should probably tell you that, well, I know it’s been a while but, uh, you should know—”

“ _Slow down_ ,” Sam shouts, grabbing for the phone, clashing over Dean’s angry “ _Max_ , pull the car over _right now_ and just _listen_ —”

“Right, right, the radius thing—oh wait, you guys were serious about it? I thought, uh, wow—yeah, I’m pulling over now, I swear—”

Dean just about blows a fuse listening to Sam and Max hash out the details, with Max giving slow, too-vague descriptions of his location (“ _There’s a big white billboard with ‘Smile’ right in front of us_.”) and with Sam getting overly geeky talking about what’s invoking the perimeter in the first place.

“Can you just settle on a damn meeting place?” Dean yells at both of them, resulting in Sam giving a hasty rundown of which roads Max can take to the motel and Max promising he’ll follow them to the letter.

 

* * *

 

Dean and Sam beat him back to the motel, heading straight for the girls’ room. The instant they open the door, Dean’s knees start quaking with a tremor that he recognizes, just not in this place. Sam steps ahead, his breath coming quickly. He wipes his brow and nods to Dean, confirming that he’s struck by the same sensation as well.

The front room is empty, the kitchenette too. Dean calls out and the bathroom door slides open, revealing Patience, her hoodie pinched over her nose. She looks shaky and uneven, leaning heavily against the door jamb.

“You okay?” Sam asks, at the same time that Dean says, “What’s the emergency?”

“Dean?” Claire calls from the back bedroom. “Oh man, c’mere—you gotta see what Cas found.”

Patience shakes her head at Dean, the hoodie sliding away from her mouth. “Don’t do it. I’ve already thrown up twice.”

In the back bedroom, Cas murmurs something and Claire cackles. Patience turns sharply at the sound, her eyes haunted. She grips the doorknob tightly, trembling as she staggers away.

“Okay…” Dean says.

Sam steps ahead to the bedroom archway. “What’s going on? Why is the perimeter happening in here?”

“C’mere and see,” Claire demands, a wild smile beaming out from her sallow face.

Dean bunches up behind Sam, smacking into his shoulder. He nudges Sam aside and approaches where Claire and Cas sit across from each other on the beds. There’s a takeout bag in Cas’ lap, some wrinkled lump of brown paper that he holds with both hands.

Claire grins at Dean over her shoulder and waggles Cas’ phone between her fingers. “Catch.”

Dean lunges for the tossed cell, grabbing it on reflex. The screen is unlocked and open to the photo gallery, a picture taken of Cas sitting in the exact same place he’s sitting now, looking much the same. Dean shares a puzzled glance with Cas. Cas returns the sentiment with an exasperated sigh.

“Swipe right,” Claire says, gesturing.

“Um.”

“Wait, you know what that is?” Claire makes a face. “Oh god, gross. Just go to the previous picture.”

Sam lifts his brow, expressing the same doubt that Dean feels about this exercise. Dean heaves a dramatic sigh and swipes away from the picture of Cas. As soon as the swipe happens, Sam gags and Dean instinctively throws the phone away.

The new picture has been opened half a second, not enough to catch sight of what it contains, but it’s long enough to cut Dean down at the knees.

With his cheek now mushed up against the carpet, Dean burbles, “What the hell?” He doesn’t remember falling, or Sam collapsing behind him, or Claire laughing so hard she’s slumped into the gap between the beds.

Cas observes them all, unamused. “I found a token, as Sam calls them. I took a picture of it.”

He sets aside the crumpled bag and reaches for where his phone has fallen screen-side down. As he lifts it, a rapid throbbing sensation crawls up Dean’s neck, so vicious it feels like his veins might split. The sensation fades once Cas has presumably locked the screen.

Dean struggles upright, resting his back against the dresser. Sam does one step better and heaves himself up onto a clothes-riddled armchair, his arms hanging akimbo over the sides.

“Told you it was a trap,” Patience mutters from the far side of the kitchenette. Her hoodie is up around her mouth and nose again.

Between raspy breaths, Sam asks, “What was that? How did you find it? Where?”

Cas shrugs. “After visiting Rebecca, I felt a nagging sensation while returning to my car. When I honed in on the object, I could tell that it was wrong. So I tore it apart and then brought its pieces here.”

“Okay, but what _is_ it?” Dean says.

“Oh. A shoe,” Cas says simply. “It’s in the bag, if you’d like to look.”

Slumped inside the armchair, Sam vehemently shakes his head. Dean feebly flags his fingers in agreement, and then lets his hand drop like a stone onto his lap. “I’m good, thanks,” he grumbles.

“You sure?” Claire grins, waggling the bag. Dean catches a whiff of a rancid feeling, a sensation rather than a scent. Sam likewise gags, while Claire retches dryly between her laughter.

Cas takes the bag back and kneads it between his hands, winching it tightly closed. He frowns sternly at Claire, earning him a heavy eye-roll that weakens as Claire rapidly passes out on the bed.

Dean blinks, disbelieving. It takes a moment to confirm that, yes, Claire is fast asleep.

“Uh,” Sam says. “Is she okay?”

Patience shrugs from the kitchenette. “Yeah, she does that now.”

“Hysteria and narcolepsy,” Cas confirms. “A dangerous combination. Let us know if your symptoms have changed as well.”

“Will do,” Sam mutters.

A vibration hits Dean’s chest, so sudden it feels like a heart attack. He grabs his chest, then struggles to grip his phone with enough dexterity to read the incoming text. _heyy i’m here can u meet outside i need to tell u smthng first_.

“Max,” Dean announces, tucking his phone away. He fights his way to his feet, swatting away Cas’ attempts to help him rise.

“Who?” Patience asks, tracking Dean toward the door.

“A friend,” Sam answers. “A witch. He might be able to help with this—shoe. Thing.”

 

* * *

 

From across the parking lot Max approaches with a smile, his arms open and placating. “Dean, hey. Okay, don’t be mad, but I wanted you to know, before you freak out—”

“ _What the fuck, Max_ ,” Dean shouts, storming for him, gaze caught on the figure leaning against the jeep’s passenger side .

“Hi Dean,” Alicia says, waving her hand.

“Hey,” Dean replies cheerfully. Back to Max, he closes the gap and hisses, “What the _fuck_ , Max. She was _dead_.”

“I know,” Max says, still smiling, “but we were discussing Sam’s theory on the case you guys are on, and it turns out—”

“Dead, Max. _Dead_.”

“—if she’s a hunter, she should remember, right? But she _doesn’t_ —”

“I told you not to do it,” Dean says sternly. “The cost of raising her, the deal—it’s too high, I _told_ you—”

“Yeah,” Max cuts in, sharp despite the breezy tone. “Yeah, Dean, you did. Problem?”

Dean holds a breath and counts it down. He’s been there. He’s done this. He’s going to control this anger and direct it more calmly away. His fist tightens, tapping against his leg. “She’s okay?”

“Yeah, she’s—”

“—right here, if you would just talk to me,” Alicia finishes, hefting her backpack onto one shoulder. “Really humanizing, by the way. Thank you for that.”

Dean winces. “I didn’t mean anything by it.”

Alicia nods. “I get it. Not every day you see a resurrection. You’d think our name is Winchester or something,” she adds, winking.

Dean ducks at the insinuation. “Alright, fine. So you’re here to help with the missing girls?”

“Maybe?” Alicia wrinkles her nose. “Thought this was about a magical barrier Max was investigating for you guys.”

Max gives Dean a pointed look, then turns to his sister. “Alicia, if you want, can you tell Dean what I told you about Abbie?”

“Who?” Alicia asks, frowning.

“The girl that’s been kidnapped,” Dean says.

Alicia shakes her head. “Sorry, he’s just been going on about aegritudonal barriers. Nothing about some kid… right?”

Max gives her a reassuring smile. “Right.” To Dean, his smile weakens. “Doesn’t matter how often I mention Abbie to her, it just won’t stick. Doesn’t make sense.”

“Yeah, well, none of it does. Join the club.” Dean shakes his head.

“What’re you talking about?” Alicia asks.

“Nothing, promise,” Max says, gently brushing his sister’s arm. “How ‘bout we get inside, see what these Winchesters have figured out so far?”

Dean chuckles. “Bound to be less than you. You got a real name for the puke perimeter even. Aggrotudinal?” Dean whistles. “Fancy.”

Max quirks a brow. “Cute, country boy. Now be useful and lead the way.”

Dean obliges, making a small bow and wave for both Banes to follow. As soon as he steps inside the motel room, Max drops his bags without prompting and makes a beeline for the bedroom. Patience jumps back when he crosses her path, staring after him. Max’s belated greeting comes and goes in the same absently-spoken breath.

Alicia makes her greetings as well, extending her hand to Patience. “Hi, I’m Alicia.”

Patience takes it tentatively, her gaze darting to Dean.

“Sister,” Dean explains, wagging his finger between her and Max. “Not a witch.”

“Patience,” Patience answers slowly. “Not a witch either.”

“Cool,” Alicia says.

Sam’s voice joins Max’s in the bedroom, the two of them chatting excitedly about the case. Dean sticks his head through the doorway in time to see Max’s back straighten as Cas approaches.

Cas awkwardly sticks out his arm. “Castiel,” he says, nodding.

“Whoa,” Max murmurs, eyeing Cas up as he shakes his hand. “You’ve got some juice to you, don’t you?”

Cas opens his mouth to answer but Max has moved on, honing in on the paper bag gripped in his other hand. Max reaches for it and, after a brief hesitation, Cas allows him to take it.

Carefully, Max unfurls the top of the bag. A whiff of sour feelings hits the room, though with a complicated hand gesture from Max it somewhat dissipates. He pulls a piece of torn leather out from the bag, turns it over between his palms. “What was this, and why did you destroy it?”

“The token,” Sam answers. “Cas found it, brought it back.”

Max hums. He returns the leather tongue of the shoe to the bag, then picks through for another piece. “You ever hear of aegritudonal magics, Sam? No? Then you better get comfy, because I have a lot to say.”

Sam crowds in, keen on Max’s explanation of magics akin to the one Rowena put them onto, a type focused on inflicting remorse and physical pain. Even Patience perks up, taking a tentative seat on the foot of the bed where Claire is softly snoring. Dean pays only part-attention to all the talk about tokens. From the corner of his eye, he watches Cas instead.

Cas sits alone on the far bed, frowning as he listens. He rubs at his ear, and then at his mouth, then flicks his thumb across one nostril. It’s an innocuous gesture on anybody else, but it’s so close to fidgeting for Cas that it seizes Dean's attention.

Cas glances at his hand, frowns, then immediately rises and heads out the room. Dean keeps his staring casual, but when he catches a glimpse of red on Cas’ fingers his partial attention drops to none, his focus honing in on solely Cas.

Dean’s heart thuds as he waits, drowning out the tap running in the bathroom. Cas comes back out drying his hands.

Cas quirks Dean a look, somewhere between confused and endeared, a soft question in his eyes. Dean takes the excuse to look straight at him, and notes the flush scrubbed into Cas’ cheeks, the pink rim of blood gathering in the crease of Cas’ nose.

“You okay?” Dean says, quiet. Cas frowns, so Dean flicks his fingers up beside his own face, feigning scratching at his nose.

“Oh. Yes, I’m fine.”

Nodding, Dean lets Cas walk past him. A breath snags in his chest, then absently releases. Words with Cas never came easy, but in their current state he just doesn’t know what else he should say.

 

* * *

 

Dean meets Sam on the poolside patio outside Alicia and Max’s room, after a supper consisting of an excessive number of pizzas. He ate too much, and combining that with the fading effect of the broken token means Dean’s gut is taking a beating right now. He plunks heavily into the chair beside Sam, gratefully accepting the beer angled out between Sam’s fingers.

“So, Alicia,” Sam says without preamble.

Dean swills a sip. “Yep.”

“Max’s deal.”

“Yep.” Dean pauses, not really thinking, just watching a couple of kids splash around the motel pool.

Sam huffs sharply. “He’s going to Hell, Dean. Shouldn’t we—”

“I know. I know.” Dean digs around his eyes, scrubbing for some sense to make. Their lives are just one problem after another. “We’ll find some way to help him, just… later.”

“Yeah, I guess. Too many things going on right now.” Sam sighs. He takes a long pull from his beer, the bottle coming to rest between the rubbing motion of his palms. “Is Alicia… normal? I mean, I know she’s a twig doll, technically, but—do we even know if she still has her soul?”

Dean thinks over the evening, with Alicia and Claire coming together over Millers, all buddy-buddy on the couch, and Patience sidling up to Max in the kitchenette, her flirting lessons acting out in real time. Alicia had laughed and smiled the same as the rest of them, had even tried to pull Cas into the festivities despite his refusal to eat. She seems happy. Safe.

“Gotta hope so,” Dean says. “Otherwise she’s awfully good at faking, and that’s a whole ‘nother set of trouble.”

Sam hums his agreement. He wipes the sweat from his beer against his jeans.

A couple rooms down, the patio door to Dean and Sam’s room opens. Cas comes out wearing his trench coat, fully dressed despite the oppressive heat. He shows no sign of his earlier injury either, no blood near his nose or ears. It doesn’t stop Dean from looking for it, or for worrying further. Things like that about Cas never made much sense.

Cas comes to rest behind and between them, his shoulders pressed against the stucco wall of the motel. “Max and Alicia are back from their perimeter trip.”

Dean perks up in his seat, twisting around with attention raised. “And?”

Cas’ mouth twists. “When Max is in the perimeter, she is affected. On her own, she is impervious to its effects.”

“That’s good.” Sam nods his head slowly, as if the idea is building steam in his mind. “It’s good, right? Cas isn’t the only one who can enter this perimeter.”

“Maybe,” Cas says in a low rumble. “But she can’t sense the tokens, and she doesn’t remember any instructions given about Abigail or Liberty.”

“Not even if Max orders her to do something with it?” Dean asks.

“I doubt he’s willing to try.” Cas shrugs. “She can enter the barrier. That’s it.”

Sam sighs, disappointed. “So she can’t help, really.”

“Not unless she wants to grab us milkshakes from the mom and pop’s across the street,” Dean says, thumbing at the distant family diner.

“A high priority, clearly,” Cas grumbles.

Dean smiles without thinking, his heart thudding when he sees Cas give a wry grin in return. Sam must get the memo, because he keeps his mouth shut and his looks between them subtle. Still, Dean’s feeling charitable despite the radio silence. He knocks the lid off the cooler between him and Sam, leaving the implication open for Cas.

Cas leans in and takes a beer. He doesn’t open the cap, merely cradles the coolness between his hands.

Behind them, Patience’s tinkling laughter cuts through the quiet.

Dean glances over his other shoulder, through the patio screen where Patience is keeping close to Max. Dean’s chuckle curls into a sigh, a smirk coming to rest on his face. “So who’s gonna break it to her that she’s barking up the wrong tree?”

“And what, tell her Claire’s lessons were for nothing?” Sam gives a wry grin in return. “Let them have their fun.”

 

* * *

 

With a rough lead regarding Rebecca’s aunt’s farm, they make plans to move south en masse in the morning, mapping out the barrier beyond the city itself. Patience’s fears over the changing perimeter are quickly proven true: the perimeter has grown, with a whole new swath of streets having succumbed to the barrier’s radius.

There’s no easy path out to where Rebecca says she went missing, so Max suggests that they take the ring road as close as they can get to the barrier and then use Cas to destroy the tokens supporting it, with the theory being that if the tokens are gone, they can cut their own path through the puke perimeter.

Privately, Dean’s more than skeptical about using Cas this way, but most everybody agrees it’s worth a shot so he bows to majority rule. Max and Cas take point in Cas’ truck, working together to find and disable more tokens. Dean and Sam follow in the Impala, alongside Alicia and the girls in Claire’s beat-up beast.

And it works, mostly, except for one clusterfuck where Cas tries bringing a token back intact for Max to study, but as he moves the puke radius comes with him, sending them all scattering. Dean’s never reversed so recklessly down a populated street, and he’d prefer to never do so again.

They keep that pattern up until they’re well beyond the outskirts, Patience and Sam texting each other notes about the changing perimeter, Claire and Alicia parking on side streets and climbing down into ditches, trying to get a clearer idea of where the perimeter yet hangs. When the afternoon heat hits hardest, Dean sends out a group text wrangling them all onto a lunch break at a rundown sandwich chain nearby. Claire deems it too sketch to eat within, so they grab takeout and pile into the parking lot, kicking down the tailgate of Cas’ truck and clambering into the bed.

Max and Alicia spin theories with Patience and Sam, and Dean watches them from the driver seat of the Impala, the door hanging open as he drops burger crumbs to the gravel below. Claire kicks her feet up in the backseat, and when Dean elbows her yet again for it she toes off a shoe and wriggles her foot by Dean’s ear, because she either has a death wish or Dean’s just no good at putting the fear of God into her anymore.

When he finishes, Dean wipes his mouth and casts his gaze around the parking lot, floating until his attention lands on Cas. The angel’s wandered off while they eat, heading out to the back fields like there’s further work to do.

Dean swipes his hands against his legs, forces his creaking knees to lift him to height. A breath for courage, then he makes the hike toward Cas.

His gut curls instinctively as he crosses the former edge of the puke perimeter, but it’s almost fully dissipated now, nothing to worry about. Cas doesn’t turn to look as Dean approaches, just keeps his fingers sifting through the tall grass growing up around the fenced-in field.

Cas’ arms twitch at his sides, restless. Dean falls into place a step behind him, leaving space should Cas prefer to pretend like Dean’s not there.

Dean stands with him, quiet for a minute. Trying to see what Cas sees, the green trees and bright blue sky cutting across the horizon, the verdant fields burnished gold by the bright afternoon sun.

The waiting becomes too much. Dean rolls the dice, clears his throat. “You coming back now?”

Cas does not move, though he answers. “Do you want me to come back?”

Dean huffs. He’s not going to play this game. “Y’know, between the two of us, you’re the one that keeps leaving, right? Now I can stand here as long as you want, but I—” Dean shuts his mouth, shakes his head. They keep arguing about the stupidest things. Gaze tucked low, Dean mutters something that means something, at least to him. “That night, you knew what I was gonna say. You _knew_ , and you still left.”

Cas hums. Dean can’t see his expression, not without grabbing an arm and wheeling him around, but the fact that Cas hasn't faced him speaks more loudly than words.

Dean blows out a breath, all dust and exhaust fumes. “You know what? Fine. Keep pretending like you didn’t know and I’ll—”

“I didn’t,” Cas says, quiet.

Dean freezes, processing.

“I didn’t,” Cas repeats, turning. He stares right into Dean’s eyes, his soul. “And I still don’t.” He comes up close with a purposeful march. “After how many years left hoping, left praying… What made you think your actions read any differently than the decade that came before?”

Dean sucks in a breath. His mouth opens in protest, but he has nothing prepared to say.

Cas comes in closer still, so near that if Dean crooked an elbow his hand would brush Cas’ hip. And Cas does as much, his fingers trailing down the outside of Dean’s arm, dragging a shiver in his wake.

“You sent your brother away so that you could talk to me,” Cas murmurs, long fingers curling around Dean’s wrist, pulling up his hand so that he might thread their fingers together. “You couldn’t stand him being in the same building as whatever you were trying to say.”

Cas’ hand envelopes his then, their fingers entwined, and Dean bucks on reflex, on the thought that Claire and Patience and the rest of them are within sight, that they might not know, that Claire might not like—

Cas puts up no fight when Dean flinches. He drops Dean’s hand with a sigh. “What good is it to love you if you won’t allow it when others are near?”

Cas doesn’t seem sad, somehow, or even angry. He merely looks as though Dean’s affection is a disappointing fact of life. It hurts so badly that Dean could suffocate on it, that to have this feeling touch him again—even for an instant—would strike him bloody and dead.

Dean trudges back through the ditch, aiming for Claire and the Impala. He spares a glance backward that he does not want to give, just enough to confirm that Cas isn’t following him, that Cas hasn’t been swayed.

It’s as expected: Cas hasn’t moved from where he stands.

Cas won’t ever move unless he wants to. Dean doesn’t know how to make him anymore, if he ever did.

 

* * *

 

After another day of fervent searching, they triangulate their best guess onto empty fields the size of a couple hundred football fields, based on Rebecca’s reported abduction fourteen years ago.

They drive out in a trio of vehicles. Max and Cas use the rest of the team to approximate the location of any tokens, and together they manage to knock out an additional four by time they come across the distant field that should have held the aunt’s house.

Dean frowns out the side window, driving slow down washboard gravel roads. “Any records of the house being demolished?”

Staring at his phone, Sam shakes his head. “Theresa Maurier moved away about eight years back, but there’s no record of her house being abandoned or foreclosed.”

“Alright, but it could’ve been?”

“Could’ve,” Sam agrees.

Dean pulls up and parks along the shoulder where Claire’s flagging him over, not far off from where Cas and Max have already stopped. Alicia and Patience have wandered past the ditch into the field, standing amid a waist-height tide of ripening wheat softly rolling in the wind. Dean and Sam climb out to see what they’re all looking at somewhere out in the distance.

As he approaches, Dean catches an odd shimmer at the corner of his eye. When he turns to look at it head-on, there’s nothing, but from a certain angle a shape blooms, large and stark against the fallow fields.

“Right here,” Patience calls to them, waving her hands above her head. “It’s clearest right here.”

Dean stomps his way through the wildgrass and wheat, his clothes catching on burr bushes along the way. He comes up between Alicia and Patience and, mimicking their positions, angles his gaze side to side, trying to find the spot where the shadow catches more clearly.

Like a magic eye puzzle, the image flips, and suddenly a farmhouse and barn appear in the distance, surrounded by a thick shelterbelt of bushes and, within, neat rows of trees.

“Whoa,” Sam whispers, when the image catches for him.

“Yeah.” Dean tilts his head back and forth, watching the farmhouse disappear and reappear. “Freaky.”

“This isn’t the aunt’s farm,” Sam says, turning to Claire. “Do the official records say a property is supposed to be here?”

“Road view says no,” Patience replies, tapping at her phone, “but satellite view says yes, a house is here.”

“It’s a glamour,” Max calls out, wading toward them through the wheat. Cas follows, his trenchcoat billowing behind him, drifting like flotsam atop the field.

“Any way you can break it?” Alicia calls back.

Max shakes his head. He waits until he’s within distance before speaking again. “Can’t sense any other source of magic within this place. The token is just too strong.”

“We have to be on the right track though, right?” Patience asks.

“Gotta be,” Claire agrees, nodding. “No other token was protected this way.”

Max starts marching closer, heading straight through the field along the viewing angle. Giddy, Claire leaps ahead and follows along with him, hooking her arm through Alicia’s and scooping her up along the way. Dean exchanges a look with his brother, but Sam only shrugs and moves to follow with Patience and Cas, who are quietly discussing some theory about the discrepancy between map views.

Dean hangs back, uneasy for reasons he can’t explain.

“Dean?” Sam lifts his brow, calling his name out like a question. “You coming?”

Dean fiddles with the keys in his pocket. “Yeah. Yeah, just a sec.”

Max falls back to Sam, explaining the kind of glamour being used. Dean catches up as they all slow down, brushing up against the outer edge of the puke perimeter and pausing there, waiting, a good half-mile out from the farmyard.

“Do we need more triangulating,” Sam asks, “or is the path pretty much set?”

Alicia shrugs, still tucked up beside Claire. She extends her arm like an arrow aimed at the yard. “We only have the one angle keeping the farmhouse in sight. I’d say Cas should just follow it, see what’s being hidden inside.”

“All in favor?” Max asks, raising his hand.

Dean bites his cheek, mulling the merit of muddying the waters. “Wouldn’t it be smarter to get rid of the token first? Then we could all go in together.”

Max nods. “True, but we might lose access to the house if we wait any longer. These types of glamours, they tend to hold for all but a certain angle of light.”

“Besides,” Sam adds, “odds are the token is at the house, right? The abductors would likely keep one where they’re located.”

Dean rolls his eyes. “Yeah, but doesn’t that smell dangerous to you? I mean, if they have these kinds of spells in their arsenal, who says they won’t have something even stronger in there?”

Claire shrugs. “Won’t know until we find out.” She smacks Cas on the back. “Up to you now, champ.”

Cas glances at Dean, nodding his resolve. He takes a deep breath and begins his march toward the house.

With nothing to do but wait, Dean kicks at the field around him, stomping down a small crop circle in his current spot. He spins slowly, listening to Patience and Alicia chatting, his gaze carrying out across the prairie. It’s odd, now that he’s thinking about it, that Cas had to shore himself up before stepping out. Like he was gathering himself before walking out into a storm.

Dean doesn’t have much time to dwell on it before one of the girls is shouting. Dean whips around, catches sight of Sam and Claire running, rushing toward—

Nothing.

The farmhouse is there, but Cas is gone.

Dean stomps ahead, kicking through the field. “What the hell? I look away for two seconds—”

“He fell,” Patience says blankly. “Cas, he—dropped, like he passed out, o-or—”

Dean’s running before she can say any more.

He flies by Claire, knocks elbows with Sam as he rushes past him, tucking his head down and barreling through the wall of nausea hitting him like a ton of bricks.

“Was he here?” Dean calls behind him. “Did he go this way?”

Dean spots the rough trail that Cas made through the field, the farmhouse winking in and out of sight with each bounding step. His ankle rolls on a rock, and as he trips the house disappears completely. Dean bowls over without meaning to, his guts emptying along the way, all the while thinking, No. If the farmhouse is gone, then did Cas—did he go with it—

Dean shuts his eyes and forces his unsteady feet forward. Sam’s shouting behind him, Claire’s shouting—they’re all yelling something. Then Dean’s ears pop, and their voices give way to a sustained hollow ringing. Dean tips his head up as he runs, to keep afloat amid the sensation of the field rushing up around him, but the blue sky does no better grounding him against the upside-down feeling pouring sweat down his back.

He blames this upward cant of his head as the reason why he finds Cas at all, his inattention resulting in him tripping over Cas’ body and sending Dean splaying. Dean catches himself roughly on one knee, saving himself from the full-body faceplant he was destined to make.

Dean retches again, his arms giving out beneath him, starbursts blackening his vision. He does not indulge this weakness though, just fumbles around until he finds Cas’ arm and wrenches it across his shoulders in a slipshod fireman’s carry. He begins stumbling in the direction he begs is the right way.

He doesn’t know how far he gets, only that it’s not far enough before he’s falling again, fighting to stay upright. Cas is shaking in his arms, his head tipped back, mouth foaming pink, eyes pale and rolling. Then something rough pops in Dean’s eye sockets and his vision gives out for good, darkness greeting him no matter how frequently he blinks.

Copper floods his throat and Dean chokes, shouting through the spray a noise that sounds like “ _Sam!_ ”

Dean catches the distant echo of his brother like it’s coming underwater. He runs for it, rushing. Tripping. Falling. Struggling, his grip death-tight on Cas…

 

* * *

 

Dean wakes feeling like dried dog shit.

He can’t lift his head. His eyes are swollen shut. His arms feel like chalk bones wrapped in beef jerky. He chokes on claustrophobic breaths as he begins to awaken more, his teeth throbbing on each inhale.

A hand is on him in an instant, steadying his shoulder. The crook of an arm comes up behind his head, followed by the press of a cool glass against his shredded lips. “Easy, easy,” Sam murmurs, and Dean starts taking short sips of water, soothing the trapped, dusty feeling ravaging his lungs. Dean chokes a bit, rousing a whole new chorus of pain throughout his body.

Sam helps him lie back down, easing him through the rictus tics that Dean’s back seems hellbent to follow. Dean runs a hand over his eyes, feels pain in both his hand and face. He blinks through the dusky gloom to find his fingers frostbite-black, the nail beds dark and aching.

Sam hovers, just a moment, as if determining whether Dean is alright enough to back away. He settles at the foot of the bed, barely illuminated by the honeyed light from the kitchenette.

Dean swallows, tasting blood. He takes his time, his thoughts building along with each raspy intake of breath. “How long was I out?”

Sam stills, then turns to better face him. He says quietly, “Just a day. You’re looking better.”

Dean tries to roll his eyes, but he can’t even open them. He sucks at his cheeks, and his teeth rattle with the suction. “Mm. Not feeling it.”

Sam huffs a laugh. “Don’t doubt it. You gave us all a scare.”

“Claire? Patience?”

“Okay. They’re okay. Max and Alicia too; they’re all recovering in the other room.” The bed squeaks as Sam readjusts. “I told them to take a break, so of course they’re working on the case. But they’re okay. We weren’t in the perimeter nearly as long or far as you.”

Dean nods, his eyes still closed. It takes him a moment to absorb the details, his thoughts idly slogging through ice water. It’s good. They’re all okay. They’re all—

Dean jolts upright, eyes opening on a peal of flames. “Cas. What about—Sammy, did he—is he—”

Sparks crackle across Dean’s vision, sapping his energy as quickly as it came. He hits the pillow like a sledgehammer and cries out, the sensation rattling through him.

Sam is up on his feet, reaching for him, pressing him back like a child. “He’s here, Dean,” Sam says. “Just a bed over. Resting, just like you.”

“Resting?” Dean tries to rise again, pushing up on an elbow. He orients himself by the dull glow of a bottle on the nightstand. Across the gap between the beds he sees Cas, propped up by pillows and dozing, his arms across his torso above the covers. He’s been stripped of his trench coat and suit jacket, the dress shirt and tie too. The remaining undershirt is dotted with dried blood, and otherwise soaked with sweat.

“How is he—” Dean frowns. “He’s sleeping. Why is he sleeping.”

Sam winces. “Best me and Max can figure is that something went wrong between Cas and his vessel, something he wasn’t aware of. He was hurt pretty badly after you got him out, falling in and out of consciousness.” Sam chews his lip. “Anyway, Max and I, we think… Cas’ grace was just masking his injuries instead of healing them. It hid how the barrier was hurting him too.”

Dean swallows, his heart pounding. He thinks back over Cas’ ventures into the puke perimeter, struggling to push his mind through the rigors of remembering again. “He was bleeding,” Dean murmurs. He flexes a finger toward his face, wincing when the bruised nail meets his nose. “Here, and here,” he adds, scrubbing a knuckle against his earlobe.

Sam sighs. “Yeah, that’s what I wondered. But he’s okay, Dean. He’s stable.”

Dean frowns up at his brother. “Stable? That the best you can say, _stable_?”

Sam huffs. “Cas released his grace, and Max stored it away for safekeeping. It’s all we can do for now. He’s healing, Dean. It just takes time.”

Dean looks again to the nightstand, frowning until its glowing bottle comes into focus. “You put his grace in a Coke bottle?”

Sam’s mouth puckers. “We improvised.”

Dean groans, settling more deeply back in the bed.

After a long moment—more than a minute, maybe even more than an hour—Sam’s voice comes softly through dreams. “Get some rest, Dean,” he says, his hand patting firmly along Dean’s shoulder.

Though Dean fights to open his eyes, he tumbles back to sleep.

 

* * *

 

Late in the night Dean limps over to the bathroom, feeling wrung out and weary, barely spry enough to fumble his way through a piss break. He keeps the lights off, his footsteps slow. As his eyes adjust, vision returning through the black patches, he spies an armchair pulled up to the foot of his bed, Sam dozing in its depths.

Cas hasn’t moved so far as Dean can tell. He sleeps with his arms still folded across his torso, his mouth twitching through each labored rise and fall of his chest. Dean waits with his breath held until he can hear Cas’ soft, shuffling breathing, the rasp of his lungs coming slow through the dark.

Dean dries his hands on his cotton undershirt and mulls around the bedroom, hobbling between his and Cas’ beds. Doubt ratchets up his spine, sapping his strength, but Dean makes up his mind and grabs his pillow, wrapping his arms around it. From the foot of Cas’ bed, Dean slides on his belly across the empty expanse. He settles close by Cas, head touching Cas’ shoulder. He pushes his face into the pillow there and breathes.

“You stupid idiot,” Dean whispers. His dry lips brush Cas’ fevered skin.

Cas’ chest rises and falls beneath the covers. Dean pushes himself along the line of him, touching from shoulder to knee. With his body warmed by Cas, Dean lets himself drift.

 

* * *

 

Sometime in the early hours Dean awakens to somebody prying at his elbow, his arm lifting up and away from Cas. He flinches, groaning, and blindly glares in the direction of the culprit. The light grip on his elbow falls away.

“Sorry, sorry,” Alex whispers, leaning close, her face cast in shadows by the hazy patio light. “Just checking on his breathing.”

Dean grunts, rolling away to give her some space, but Cas inhales sharply and follows him, his arms tightening around Dean’s ribs. Alex moves her stethoscope across Cas’ back, pausing in several places. Dean allows her to pluck up his own wrist and check his pulse as well.

“He okay?” Dean murmurs, his breath stirring the hair by Cas’ temples. Cas smells like sweat and stale shampoo, a deceptively earthy scent.

“Okay for now,” Alex whispers back. “Help me turn him on his back? I want to start an IV.”

Dean groans again. With more energy than he should muster, he curls forward, rolling Cas onto his back by pushing himself atop him.

Alex gently takes Cas’ hand from where he’s tucked it around Dean. An alcohol swab rips open, and Alex swipes the back of Cas’ hand. A rustling of paper and plastic follows, and then a cannula appears, taped firmly against the back of Cas’ hand. A suspiciously hospital-grade saline bag hangs from an IV pole positioned beside the bed.

“All good,” Alex whispers again. “I’ll check on him again when he’s awake. Can you drink some water while you’re up?”

Dean nods, his eyes falling closed. He pushes himself upright and attempts to hold the glass and painkillers she feeds to him, his hands shaking throughout. He exhales on a heavy breath, and then settles again around Cas. “Jody here?”

“Mhmm. Jack and Mary too. Claire called. You scared us.”

“Hm.” Dean rubs a hand along the ridges of Cas’ ribs, feeling out the wire-taut cords of muscle, the smooth planes of skin beneath his shirt. “Thanks.”

Cas sighs, a deep rumble carrying through Dean’s body. Dean continues to brush his hands over him, confirming that he’s real, he’s alive and this isn’t a dream, dragging his fingers over Cas, again, and again, and again.

 

* * *

 

Dean wakes to find Cas resettled upon him, his chest moving alongside Dean’s, his hands rucked up beneath Dean’s shirt. Still tired, still dozing, but enough time has passed that the IV has come and gone. A glance to Sammy’s armchair confirms they’re the only ones in the room. Dean takes the moment to send out silent thanks that Cas has pulled through okay.

Dean doesn’t remember Alex leaving, or Sam throwing blankets over the both of them. Murmured conversations carry from the room’s front entryway, but for all Dean cares the rest of his family may as well be miles and miles away.

Dean drapes a heavy arm over Cas’s shoulder and pulls him in, lets himself tuck more firmly into the space Cas has claimed from him. He scratches his fingers through the thick hair at the nape of Cas’ neck, catching sight of his own hands winking through. The nail beds have softened, the color returning to pink from the prior black and blue. His vision has cleared. His teeth sit firmly-rooted in his head. Dean is tired, but finally feeling his strength return.

Dean then looks over Cas, noting the bruises that have faded beneath his eyes, how his breathing comes through clearer now. He brushes a stray lock off Cas’ brow, all the while a powerful emotion building within him, this rush of heartsickness that never truly seems to fade.

After all this time, Dean could have lost him. He could have spent their final week fighting over some stupid shit he should have said, words he should have practiced and repeated until he was certain Cas knew the depths to which Dean loves him too.

The gap between what Dean can say and what he should is a knife’s edge still, the confessions he owes to Cas and the ones he doubts he’ll ever have the guts to make. That it was Dean’s neediness that brought on that terrible argument, his loneliness making him try to eke out that pointless promise of Cas staying in the first place.

“I’m sorry,” Dean says now, heartache pouring out into the crown of Cas’ hair. “It was all me, wrecking things, as usual. Being open, out here with you…” Dean’s breath comes in shakily. “I’ve never done it right. Not sure I even know how. But that’s on me. It wasn’t because of you.”

Cas hums, squeezing through his slumber. Dean sighs and scrubs a rough hand up Cas’ back, earning another stretch and sigh. Cas tucks into him, his scruff scratching along Dean’s neck, his mouth damp against tender skin. Dean drops his cheek atop Cas’ head and thanks the universe they’re both still here.

 

* * *

 

Dean retreats around the time Cas starts lingering in wakefulness, his consciousness returning for increasingly longer bouts. He figures it’s about time he left Cas’ bed anyway, beyond the easy out it gives should Cas wish to discontinue their closeness—recovery or no, Dean’s not one to permit himself much idleness, so he straps on his boots and makes his way over to Claire and Patience’s room, now also occupied by Alex and Kaia, to catch up on the case.

When he’s finally rejoined the land of the living, Cas is hungry and tired and chocked full of a categorized list of other petty human complaints. He sways on his unsteady path between the bedroom and the bathroom, grousing about the bland foods he’s obligated to eat and the ‘pungent’ laundry he has to borrow from Dean. He remains awake for a few hours at a time before collapsing on the nearest flat surface, the need for further rest pouncing on him unexpectedly throughout the day.

His complaining becomes bad enough that Sam books a separate room with Jack by Mary’s, and even Alex gives up checking on Cas after his perpetual insistence that he’ll heal fine without her assistance.

Dean chalks it up to the shaky circumstances under which Cas let go of his grace, compounded by the imperfect vial they found for keeping it safe. Cas is human now—disheveled and sweating and accepting painkillers only begrudgingly, scratching away at his borrowed henley and softly snoring in his sleep. No wonder he’d be miserable, adapting to humanity with the lot of them, at the mercy of their sorry life lessons.

Thundershowers slide in one night and linger, stranding them indoors for a couple days. Since the rest of them are at full health and planning a comeback, Dean finds himself alone with Cas for the duration of their downtime, cornered in the bedroom on their separate beds. Cas is awake for once and fumbling his way through research. His lingering cough sets the laptop he’s borrowed swaying atop his chest.

The patio curtains have been left open, and the gray patter of rain sizzles up from the concrete walk outside. The sliver of pool within view bubbles like it’s spawning season. Dean keeps the TV quiet on the news, his legs extended and crossed at the ankles, hands folded up in each other on his lap. He watches it without a thought in mind, his eyes closing the longer he listens to the rain.

Claire comes in sometime later, when the storm shows no sign of slowing and she’s clearly grown sick of research. She folds a leg beneath her and sits up against Cas’ headboard, gaze fixated on the laptop. A couple minutes pass, and then Claire pops Cas’ headphones out from the jack. The low din of a laugh track floods the room.

Dean faces them slowly, disbelieving. He’s kept his distance now that Cas is mostly up and chugging, giving Cas the space he needs to forget how he took comfort from Dean. But now that Claire has hunched around the pillow Dean had claimed from Cas’ bed, the two of them intently watching whatever comedy show Cas has pulled up on the screen, Dean feels out an opening for a chance to talk to him.

“Thought you were researching,” Dean grumbles.

Claire snorts, quirking a small smile. “The 70s, maybe. Must be _Happy Days_ , because Jean-Ralphio’s dad is definitely on the screen.”

Dean blinks, pushing sleep from his eyes. He turns down the TV, dropping the room beneath the din of the storm outside, and then pushes up until he can crane his neck towards the laptop across the gap between their beds.

Cas doesn’t look at him, but he angles the screen so the view is available to everyone. Dean watches long enough to determine that yes, that is the Fonz, even if Claire’s cultural milestones have shifted him onto something from the past ten years. He settles in to enjoy a show he hasn’t seen in ages, and certainly not with a grumpy, newly-human angel chuckling along with the track.

Half a season has passed before Kaia makes her way over, shuffling quietly into the dimly-lit room and planting herself on the sheets behind Claire. Claire scoots in on the bed and sets a cheek on Cas’ shoulder, her grip around the pillow shifting as Kaia wraps an arm around her waist.

Claire takes Kaia’s hand, mumbles something about keeping her anchored on the bed, but Dean knows an excuse when he hears it—he’s made enough for him and Cas throughout the years. Dean looks to Cas now, just to see what he’s thinking, and finds Cas passing a knowing look his way.

Hours later, after the laptop’s battery has died and both Kaia and Claire have dozed off, Cas crawls out from his bed and slides into the empty half of Dean’s without preamble, just taking the place like it belongs to him. Cas reaches across Dean and plucks up the remote, turning up the muted television. He keeps his arm where it’s settled across Dean, preferring to perch his chin against Dean’s shoulder and doze from that angle instead.

Dean forces himself to be still and steady, his touch light as he curves an arm around Cas, his throat working dry as he returns Cas’ mumbled goodnight.

 

* * *

 

The following morning, Dean wakes to an empty room, an empty bed. A note on the nightstand says the gang’s out on a breakfast run. Dean pushes through his routine and dresses perfunctorily, biding his time as the percolator stretches. The bathroom is damp with a recent shower, stuffy with the scent of Dean’s own aftershave. He digs through his bags but never finds his favorite shirt. He ends up picking out a black henley and tossing layers atop it instead.

With nowhere to go, Dean heads outside and plants his ass along the cool curb, a cup of black coffee tucked between his legs. The storm has passed, the air left muggy. Dean’s head yet aches despite how he’s healed, and an airy tone still rings in the back of his ears. He feels like he could pass out for a month and not be any better rested. At this point, the full-body aches are a given.

He hunches over the disposable cup and breathes in the steamy scent of coffee, his shoulders rounded, head bowed down over his knees. He takes a moment to appreciate the warmth of the cup and the brightness of the sunrise, the soft blues and pinks shining along the Impala’s chrome finishing. It could’ve easily turned out that he’d never see the start of another day.

Someone approaches along the motel sidewalk behind him, gravel crunching as they slow. A hand falls upon his shoulders and starts slowly rubbing, soothing the muscles in his back.

Dean melts beneath the ministrations, feeling looser, more relaxed. He murmurs into his cup, “Thanks, Mom.”

Mary sighs beside him, her hand stilling. “You should’ve told us sooner that you needed help.”

Dean shrugs and sips at his coffee. “Not much you could do that we weren’t already handling.”

“Still.” Mary’s mouth thins. Dean can see the worry she’s reining in, the chiding _You could have died_ she’s biting back. He nods to her, his brows lifted with contrition, the best he can do to say that he’s sorry for that too.

Mary runs her hand up the back of his neck, scrubbing his hair. Her thumb flicks the tip of his ear. Dean leans into as much as he will allow it. His mom might have trouble showing it sometimes, but she cares enough to come through for them in the end.

From the frontage road, a white truck pulls up, its doors decaled green with proclamations of the Minnehaha County Sheriff. Jody parks and climbs out, and Patience piles out from the passenger side, followed by Alex finagling herself out from the cramped middle seat.

“Looks like we’re too late for one of you,” Jody says, angling her coffee tray toward Dean.

“I’ll take whatever’s in the bag, if you don’t mind,” Dean answers. Jody flicks open the brown paper bag and Dean fishes out a donut from within. He shoves the honey-dipped ring into his mouth, loudly moaning as he chews. “You’re doing god’s work, Jody. Don’t ever change.”

Jody swats at him with the remaining donuts. “Get up already so I can hug you.”

Dean wipes his mouth and struggles to his feet, making space for Jody to crowd in on him, her grip intense along the line of his back. She whispers, fierce, “Good to see you standing, son.” He lets himself hold her longer than he might otherwise abide.

Mary nods toward Patience and Alex, who lean against Jody’s truck with their own breakfast bags. “Where’s the rest of them?”

Sighing, Jody flaps her arm wildly out at the frontage road. “They were behind us just a minute ago, but knowing Claire they probably stopped for drive-thru somewhere.”

Sure enough, Claire’s red car rounds the corner not long later, Sam’s F-150 following in her wake. Dean spies Kaia in Claire’s front seat, the two of them rolling their eyes and grinning over something being shared with Max and Alicia in the back. His gaze wanders to where Sam has parked, catching on Cas and Jack as they climb out.

Jack waves and greets Dean good morning, which Dean returns though he's distracted by how Cas has his shoulder slouched over, his arm wrapped around a brown bag that’s wrinkled at the top like a bottle neck.

“Little early for hooch, ain’t it?” Dean says, flagging his fingers at Cas. Belatedly, he finds his missing shirt filled out by Cas, followed by his second-favorite pair of jeans.

“It’s my grace,” Cas answers, shrugging around the bag.

“And it’s safe to be carrying around like that?” Dean asks.

Cas’ expression is pinched when he looks at Dean, his eyes sharp and inscrutable. Dean decides now is not the time to start in on anything. He waves over Claire instead. “What’d you bring us?”

She fires out ricochet-quick, lobbing a bag directly at Dean’s head. Dean’s lucky his reflexes have recovered enough to catch it, otherwise he would have enjoyed a greasy bag smashing into his face.

“Hey, don’t waste food!” Dean tells her, checking on the damaged goods, the fries now loose from their carton but the breakfast burger looking mostly intact.

“It’s the bacon bacon bacon hangover burger,” Claire says cheerily. “By the look of you, you needed it.”

Dean dives in with a grin.

The lot of them settle in between their parked cars, leaning and sipping at their coffees. Dean snags a second donut from Max’s breakfast stash and winks his thanks at the twins.

“How’ve you been, Cas?” Jody asks, reaching out to touch his arm. “Still adjusting?”

Cas shrugs, giving a sour look that Dean assumes is his new resting face. “Without my grace, I am… recovering, but it will be some time yet before I’m capable of accepting its return.”

“But… are you okay?” Jody says.

Cas shrugs again. “Being human is more pleasant than the alternative. I’ve suffered far worse than migraines and the necessary upkeep of dental hygiene.”

“Can Jack help you heal?” Mary asks. Both Cas and Jack shake their heads.

“I’ve tried,” Jack says, “and not just on Cas. But my powers can’t fix whatever the perimeter has done.”

“Well, you tried,” Dean says, biting into his burger. “Nobody can fault you for that.”

“What’s next though?” Alicia asks, looking around the group. “Forecast is clear, and everyone’s back on their feet.”

“Ready for round two?” Max says, an eyebrow raised in challenge.

“Hardly,” Kaia grumbles, kicking a rock across the parking lot. Claire bumps her with her hip, and Kaia unfolds her arms and elbows back at Claire.

“What, you thinking today?” Dean scoffs through his fries. “Sorry, but Cas just said he needs more time.”

Sam clears his throat, looking shifty as he glances toward Mary and Jack.

Dean slows his eating and stares down his brother, waiting until he cracks. “What.”

“Nothing,” Sam says, brows lifting. “Nothing. Just...”

“Jack can sense the tokens,” Patience answers, “and he has immunity to the perimeter. We discussed it while you were two out of it. He can take over for Cas.”

Cas steps in, shaking his head. “No. This token is better protected than the others. If it could take out an angel, it could easily harm a nephil—”

“I’ve tested it already,” Jack says, all earnestness. “I flew out there the other night. I could feel the token even though it was too late to see the farmhouse. The barrier wouldn’t allow me to fly inside, but I could walk through it without any pain.”

Cas’ jaw tightens, his mouth thinning to an unhappy line. Dean watches the gears turn in his head, waits to put voice to what they’re both thinking. “Not like we have any better options, Cas. Not just anybody can fill your shoes.”

“I know,” Cas says quietly, his gaze flickering to Dean. “I dislike it, but I will abide by Jack’s decision.”

“We know what to watch out for now,” Alex says, assuring. “I’ll be there with my med bag if anything happens.”

“It won’t,” Jack insists. “I know it. I’ll destroy the token and we’ll bring the Lynn sisters home safe.”

“So it’s settled,” Sam says, nodding. “We’ll convoy out there and be ready as backup the moment Jack takes down the token. All in favor?”

Dean watches as, one by one, ten hands raise. He crumples up the remains of his breakfast and slowly lifts up his hand. With a pointed look to Cas, Dean sees him raise his hand as well.

 

* * *

 

With the plan settled, they pair off in the afternoon to drive out to the farmstead. By Dean’s own machinations he ends up with Cas, the two of them alone in the Impala.

The day is warm, the sky a bright blue pocked with fluffy white clouds. Dean keeps the radio tuned low past the outskirts, his gaze bouncing beyond the ditches and skimming over the seas of wheat surrounding them. He takes the corner at the tail end of their procession, pulling from smooth highway onto single lane grid road.

Miles of gravel pass with neither of them speaking. Cas’ grace bottle rattles on the seat between them, rocking against the belt clasp with each bump in the road. Dean fans his fingers out along the steering wheel, pretending for the moment that he can touch the tension that has grown between them, this terrible gray space where they’ve made amends without actually making amends.

Dean has to try. He made this mess, so he ought to clean it up somehow, set things right. But between Cas glaring at him and Cas cuddling up against him, Dean’s uncertain what it is he should say.

“Your grace, uh.” Dean clears his throat. “It okay in there? Should we ask Max to put it in a, well—I’m sure there’s something we could find that would—”

“It’s fine, Dean,” Cas says quietly. “I don’t mind.”

Dean nods brusquely, his hands flexing along the steering wheel. “So are you—”

Cas inhales sharply. “If one more person asks me if I’m alright, so help me—”

“Alright, okay.” Dean ducks his head, peacemaking. “We’re just worried, s’all. You took a big hit.”

Cas turns to look at him. “So did you.”

Dean glances over, quick enough to catch Cas’ eye and then dart away. He squeezes the wheel.

So much for courage. Even small talk seems impossible now.

After a few miles, Cas opens his mouth, pausing as if on a difficult thought. Dean’s nerves ratchet up another notch.

Cas begins slowly, “Dean, about that night—”

No. Not yet. It’s not supposed to be him that says it.

Dean shakes his head. “No.”

“I’m sorry, but—”

“No,” Dean says again. He can’t hear this, not now. “Don’t.”

Cas frowns, his lips parting. Firmly, he says, “That night, I shouldn’t have left you—”

“Cas,” Dean says. “No. Here’s what’s gonna happen: you’re not gonna apologize, and I’m not gonna say it was a mistake.” He licks his lips. “I am sorry, though. I shouldn’t’ve waited so long to tell you. And I shouldn’t have taken it out on you when you didn’t want to stay.”

The grace bottle rattles sharply on the seat between them. Cas touches it with his fingertips, steadying it against his hip.

“I do want to stay,” Cas murmurs, “but I can’t promise you that I always will. My duties to heaven are—”

“Fuck heaven,” Dean says vehemently. “Fuck Naomi, and all those other pieces of—”

“—and I must always be ready should they need me,” Cas finishes. “But when they don’t… I want to be here with you. If you’ll still have me, that is.”

Dean glances to the passenger seat, a sweep so quick he hopes Cas can’t catch the brightness to his eyes.

“I screwed up,” Cas continues. “I hurt you too. For all that I’ve dreamed of finally having you—”

Dean briefly squeezes his eyes shut. “Cas…”

“—we’ve never truly spoken about it. And as well as I know you, there are parts of your life that remain inscrutable to me. I don’t always understand what I mean to you.”

Cas looks over to him from the front dash, Dean can feel it, he can sense the pull of Cas’ gaze upon him. Biting his tongue, Dean keeps his mouth shut and his eyes on the road. He already knows better than to let his nerves get the better of him. He never should have tried to pin Cas down with promises to stay. Never should have shown how badly he needs Cas to tell him that he will.

“Dean…” Cas touches his arm gently. “You’re shaking. Pull over.”

He doesn’t want to—he’s driven through worse—but Cas tightens his grip and of course Dean caves. He throws on the signal and nudges the car from gravel into grass, coming to a full stop at a field approach.

Dean throws the Impala into park. Cuts the ignition. Road dust floats by outside their windows, painting the landscape hazy and pale. The engine ticks down as it cools. Dean leaves his trembling hands on the wheel.

Cas taps his nails against the Coke bottle, chiming out a hollow ring. He then sweeps aside the bottle, so sharply that the glass clinks against the pebbles in the footwell. Dean frowns, a protest forming, but in a lithe movement Cas undoes his seat belt and slides along the front seat, and then reaches for Dean to undo his too. Dean follows the motion of his hands, how Cas hooks his grip beneath Dean’s thigh and reels him in, pulling him into the middle seat.

“Cas,” Dean breathes, soft as butter in Cas’ hands. Cas moves for him and Dean lets him, his hands steadying Cas as he slides into his lap. Dean closes his eyes, spreads his knees and stills his hands, pausing on the warm skin above the belt of Cas’ borrowed jeans. His breath snags as his thumbs come to rest on the jut of hip bone to each side of Cas’ waist.

Cas cups his neck and lifts Dean up from where he’s trying, trying so desperately, to pretend that this might be real. His thumb soothes against Dean’s temple, coaxing him into opening his eyes. He leans in, cheek to cheek.

“I’m not supposed to want you,” Cas murmurs, warm and wet into Dean’s ear, “and I thought I could abide by it.”

His hands curve over Dean from neck to navel, long fingers coming up and curling through the shorn hairs at the nape of Dean’s neck.

“When I couldn’t,” Cas continues, lips trailing across Dean’s cheek, “I thought I had found a loophole. That to be close to you, to love you at a distance, it would be enough.”

Cas drags his mouth across Dean’s and Dean’s breath gutters, the swell of his lip catching on the stubble around Cas’ pink lips, and Dean’s easy, he’s so easy—Cas could ask for his dying breath and Dean would give it to him gladly, would collapse beneath the weight of such a would-be kiss.

“For years, I told myself not to get greedy,” Cas murmurs, mouth against Dean’s cheek. “Told myself not to want more.”

He tilts up Dean’s chin, cupping Dean’s face with both broad hands. Dean blinks through the haze and stares up into endless blue.

“I lied to myself, Dean. Every time.” Cas touches their brows together. Dean tightens his grip on Cas’ hips and Cas groans, low and gravel-rough. “Each time I go, I always want you more.”

His mouth is a wet line so close, so close to Dean’s own.

“Whatever you need,” Cas says, “I’ll give it to you.”

Dean moans, rolling his hips, trying to shift Cas closer. “Don’t want—a martyr. If you really want this—you have to let me know too.”

“I do,” Cas murmurs, moving his mouth closer. “And I will. Whatever I can have, whatever you can give, I take it all with joy.”

“Sap,” Dean mutters, his cheeks heating. He flattens his hands along Cas’ back and curves him in, fulfilling the promise of his kiss.

Cas’ mouth meets his with a bump of teeth, followed by brief pressure and a breathless _oh_ as Cas’ lips part. He draws back as if uncertain. Dean nudges back in and kisses him again.

His lips are warm, dry and supple as he moves against Dean. A sharp inhale comes when Dean licks the seam of his mouth, and then Cas has his hands cupped beneath Dean’s jaw, angling him just right to do that again.

“You taste—” Cas says, scarcely audible before he’s diving in again, his nails scritching in the shorn hairs on Dean’s nape, thumb curving over the lobe of Dean’s ear. Dean doesn’t know how Cas might’ve answered, but for himself Cas is warm and wet and wonderful as he licks into Dean’s mouth.

Dean breaks apart when Cas gets a hand down between them, knuckles bumping the softness in Dean’s gut. He grabs Cas’ hips and circles him down, the swell of their cocks coming together. Cas breaks the kiss with a moan, leaving Dean panting hard against his throat, hands dragging up under the back of Cas’ shirt, fingers prying sharply at Cas’ belt.

“Help me,” Cas breathes, fumbling for the zipper.

“C’mere,” Dean says, “let me.” His knuckles brush the hair on Cas’ belly. He undoes the button on Cas’ jeans, then his own. The zipper hums like a promise along his dick, leaving him grunting and grinding against Cas again.

Cas foists up, shoves his jeans and underwear down, his cock appearing in the gap between them. Dean finds himself staring dumbly down at the sight of it, wet and pink against him, his breath catching at its weight. Cas nips at his mouth and tongues his way back in, his fist moving to his leaking cockhead and giving it a slick pump.

Dean glides his hand down along Cas’ arm, bumps his grip aside and replaces Cas with a tunnel made by his own fist. His palm is rough, introducing a shudder to Cas’ thrusts, but if Cas’ increasing moans are anything to go by he’s into it. His panting rumbles into the juncture of Dean’s neck, teeth catching on the strained tendons as Dean groans along the same.

Dean pulls away, mouthing apologies against Cas’ lips, gets himself out and takes both their cocks in hand. His free hand runs down Cas’ spine, spreads across his ass and digs in, changing his angle into something dirty. Cas plants his hands on Dean’s chest and rocks roughly against him, his thrusts catching against Dean’s dick, making Dean squirm with his own breathy moans.

“Baby, you’re so beautiful,” Dean murmurs, mouthing at Cas’ cheek, trailing the sharp line of bone beneath his eye. Cas moves a hand to Dean’s neck and holds him in place as he kisses him, his hips dragging against Dean’s belly. Dean gives up his grip on their dicks and just allows Cas to thrust against him, his own cock trapped beneath the weight of Cas’ body, his wet hand digging into Cas’ thick thigh. He mouths along the apple in Cas’ throat, tongue delving out to scrape the stubble, the full column of Cas’ neck now exposed.

Dean runs a rough hand over Cas’ scalp, setting loose the wild waves of his dark hair. He murmurs praise at the way Cas comes apart above him, his own orgasm building as Cas drives himself toward release.

A sharp gasp ghosts Dean’s cheek and Cas then crumbles, the breath rushing out of him as he lands heavily atop Dean. Dean snakes a hand between them, and with a few rough tugs he finishes, come splashing beside Cas’ across the belly of his shirt.

They breathe deeply in the aftermath, bare skin slicked together. Dean chases down Cas’ lips and kisses him softly, taking a moment to appreciate their proximity before it too might be lost.

Dean sighs, brushing their brows together. He curls his fingers gently along Cas’ arm. “So… d’you wanna do that again sometime?”

Cas’ chuckle rumbles through him. “Don’t deny me this, Winchester,” he says, throat husky, following the demand with a sloppy press of lips.

Dean smiles through the kiss, then drops his chin to his chest, succumbing to the full strength of his grin. He smooths a hand along Cas’ arm, briefly entertaining the thought, the reality, that he might have this again. Have it always, if only he could bring himself to believe.

Cas must sense this edge within him, though mercifully he doesn’t bring it attention. He merely tilts up Dean’s head and tucks his mouth against Dean’s temple, murmuring, “I love you, Dean. That will always, always be true.”

Dean blinks hard. He clears his throat, plucking at his ruined shirt. “Any chance there’s a spare in the back?”

Cas hums his curiosity and leans forward on his knees, giving Dean the perfect excuse to wrap his arms around Cas, feeling out the shift and slide of muscle as Cas readjusts in his lap.

“There is,” Cas answers, “but you’re not going to like it.”

Dean groans against Cas. “Tell me it’s not Sam’s.”

“No, I think it’s Patience’s hoodie.” Cas sits back with the article in-hand. “What are your feelings about salmon pink?”

Dean drops his head to the bench seat. Back to the motel it is.

 

* * *

 

They show up over an hour late at the same field they’d found before. Dean parks behind Jody’s truck and climbs out, feeling conspicuous no matter the excuse he might give for their delay.

“Finally felt like joining us?” Sam calls to him, his smirk obvious despite the distance.

Dean flips him off in answer, stomping his way through the tall grass surrounding the field.

With one arm cradling his grace bottle, Cas skims his free hand down Dean’s arm, nodding to him as he parts ways, aiming for where Mary and Max are in deep discussion with Jack. Dean sidles up beside his brother, bursting whatever bubble of conversation had been floating between him and Jody. Not far off, Alex and Patience hang close to Alicia, the three of them giving Kaia and Claire their space.

Dean looks up at his brother, squinting against the sun. “You waiting for us?”

“Nah.” Sam shakes his head. “Angle’s wrong for breaking the glamour. Max figures we got about another twenty minutes to wait.”

“Damn. Should’ve packed a picnic.”

Jody replies, “If you stack your plaid end-to-end we might have enough for a blanket.”

“Hey, now. Sacrifice Sasquatch’s clothes, sure, but you’re not touching these threads.”

“Speaking of,” Claire calls, having started wandering over, “did you change? Could’ve sworn you weren’t wearing vintage earlier.”

Dean raises a brow. “Do you really want an answer to that?”

Claire’s nose wrinkles. “Jody, you’re footing therapy for this.”

“Don’t dish what you can’t take, sweetheart,” Jody says, smiling.

Dean falls into place beside his brother, watching with Sam for a beat as the others swarm each other in lazy circles. Sam looks like he’s enjoying the sun and the breeze, his sleeves rolled up and his hair pushed back.

Sam turns to Dean from where he was facing the sky, his eyes closed. Sam squints at him, asks, “So how was the drive? D’you two work things out?”

Dean bows his head, tucking his hands into his jeans. He kicks at the dirt beneath them, thinking. Not really thinking. “Yeah. Yeah, I think so.”

Sam eyes him closer, a look that Dean knows always finds too much. Sam smiles then, nudges Dean with his shoulder. “Know I love you no matter how it turns out, okay?”

Dean scoffs, elbows him back. “Everybody’s a sap these days.”

Max calls out, pointing to the glamour as it fails, the tail-end of the white farmhouse coming abruptly into view. As if on cue they come together, clustering closer to the perimeter. Dean follows the procession, his gaze trained on his mom and Cas, the two of them sharing additional words of caution with Jack.

“Five minutes, and no more,” Cas insists, his hand firm on Jack’s shoulder. “If you can’t find the token by then, come back and we’ll come up with another plan.”

Jack nods dutifully, and with a brief pat on the back from Mary he’s on his way.

Dean brushes up against the edge of the perimeter, same as the rest of them, while they watch Jack go. Mary and Jody test the vanishing points of the farmhouse, wandering side to side, while the younger women make a game out of stepping into the perimeter, seeing how long they can hang inside the edge before the ache becomes too great.

They’re all tense with nerves, watching. Dean crowds up beside Cas, feeling his tension as he leans into Cas’ shoulder. Cas nudges back before leaning stiffly against him, his gaze trained on Jack’s retreating form.

Jack’s out beyond a quarter mile before he disappears around the corner of the farmstead.

Dean holds his breath, waiting.

Nothing seems to happen for a very long time.

Then the air snaps with a crackle like thunder, and when they check the farmhouse again, it remains in full view regardless of angle. Dean looks to Cas, who nods and, tucking his grace more securely into his elbow, takes a step past the perimeter.

The barrier doesn’t hit Dean like it used to. It washes over him but fades just as easily, nowhere near the teeth-rattling strength it had before. Sam and Claire lap him quickly, followed by Mary, the three of them trotting ahead with their guns unholstered. Dean turns to Cas, contemplating picking up the pace, when Patience abruptly calls out for him.

Dean turns to find Patience jogging up from the spot where Alicia and Alex yet linger with Jody, Kaia and Max. She bows a bit beneath the former perimeter line, her breathing winded, but she recovers quickly. “Don’t shoot them,” Patience says, all rush of breath. “You can draw your gun, but don’t shoot. It’ll only make them mad.”

“The abductors?” Cas asks. “You saw them?”

Patience nods. “There’s three of them at the house. They’re not what we think.”

Dean nods to Patience, thanking her. He then looks sharply to Cas. “Cas, you better stay.”

Cas scowls at Dean. Without breaking his glare, he holds his grace bottle out to Patience. “Watch this, please. Don’t drop it.”

Patience cringes, handling the bottle with exceptional delicacy. “Great. This is great. A totally normal babysitting duty.”

Dean rolls his eyes, but he doesn’t argue beyond that.

With the puke perimeter down, Dean picks up the pace, trying to catch his brother with Cas in step beside him. Ahead, Sam and Claire slow down as they reach the windbreak, pausing outside the rows of hackberry and boxelder trees. Mary comes up behind, and the three of them murmur out their plan. Claire and Sam take point on their way into the farmyard, while Mary moves at an angle toward the surrounding brush.

Within the shelterbelt, the farmyard opens into an expanse of green lawn around the back end of the house, split by the curve of a short gravel lane carrying toward the housefront. A dirt plot fills the backyard between the house and lane, teeming with neat rows of corn, peas, and other bushy plants. On the far side of the yard, trees heavy-laden with fruit outstretch in untidy rows toward the distant field.

Sam and Claire wait for Dean and Cas to catch up, and then Sam motions for them to split around the house, approaching it from either side. Dean readies his gun, nodding. Sam and Claire prep their own weapons and silently trod the other way.

Dean spares Cas a quick nod and then rounds the corner of the farmhouse, coming across the rusting shell of a vintage truck. It sits on rotten tires in front of a covered porch, at the foot of which stands Jack, a tall figure standing beside him.

“Castiel!” Jack says, smiling. “I found the token.” He waves them over with a warm grin.

Heart pounding, Dean keeps his gun trained on the monster beside Jack, ready to fire despite Patience’s forewarning, but the creature seems docile, almost curious. It cranes its neck over Jack’s head, its humanoid face bowed close, sniffing. Dean slows down as they close in, his brain stuttering through its attempts to process the sight before him.

Surpassing eight feet tall with its long, curved horns, the creature watches them with large amber eyes, its gaze darting between Cas and Dean, then back to Jack. Its human hands twitch toward each other, fidgeting. It looks to be covered in a fine pelt of gray fur.

Dean does not lower his gun.

Sam and Claire burst around the far corner, their weapons likewise raised. Mary comes up not far behind, and the faun-like creature whips its head toward them, a mane of silvery hair sweeping out from its hood with the motion.

Sam casts a wild look between Dean and the creature. “What the hell is it?”

“I’m not sure,” Jack answers, holding his hand up toward it. The creature mimics his motion, fanning out the gray digits of its right hand. “It seemed interested when I broke the token. It came up and started watching me.”

“There’s more,” Cas says gruffly. Dean follows his gaze, spies a couple more of the same species now standing inside the covered porch, watching from the threshold of the front door.

Dean brushes up close to Cas. “You recognize these things?”

“I might,” Cas murmurs back. He clears his throat and makes a noise like a low, extended purr.

In an instant, the two creatures on the porch come rushing for him. Mary and Sam steady their guns, but Cas flares one hand out at them, warning them off. “Don’t. Not yet.”

The pair of creatures crowd over Cas, murmuring in a low purr much smoother than the one Cas has managed. Beneath the hem of their robes, Dean thinks he sees cloven feet. Cas holds up his arm, similar to what Jack has done, and the nearer of the two, the one whose hair hangs in wispy curls, touches its svelte fingers to the palm of his hand.

“They’re neniven,” Cas says quietly, keeping his gaze trained on the pair chittering to him. “Relative to glaistigs. Tutelar creatures.”

Dean looks to Jack across the gap, where the creature standing with him has paired its palms to his, a light, airy peal of laughter coming from it. “Meaning?”

“They’re benign,” Cas says. “Most frequently known for protecting grazing flocks and their shepherds, or tending to the children left alone while their parents farm.”

“They’re safe?” Claire says.

Cas shrugs. “Usually.”

“Except they stole children,” Mary reminds them. “They almost killed you and Dean.”

“Cas, can you ask them about that?” Sam asks. “Where are the Lynn sisters?”

Cas clears his throat and purrs something up at the neniven crowding over him, but before he even finishes the two begin chittering animatedly. The one by Jack begins nudging at his back, ushering him toward the front steps of the house.

Dean raises his gun as Jack’s neniven crosses by him, to which it squints its amber eyes at him and flexes its fingers. An electric shock runs up Dean’s arm so sharply he drops the gun. The creature shoots a foul look at the weapons held by Claire, Sam and Mary, but it leaves them be when they don’t make any further threatening motions.

Jack takes the front step two at a time, followed closely by his neniven.

“Jack, don’t—” Dean calls out, pursing his mouth when Jack enters the house anyway. He looks around, but Cas is carrying on a halting conversation with the remaining two, so Dean holsters his gun and makes his way after Jack.

The kitchen inside is… normal, if plain. No cobwebs or dust, only gentle signs of wear. Mismatched coats and shoes on a mat by the entryway. Dishes dry in the rack beside the empty sink, fruit ripens in bowls on the counter, and a mound of hard, homemade bread sits half-eaten on a cutting board. The late afternoon light shines through scummy windows, but otherwise the place is neat and clean. Ordinary, with an outdated stove and refrigerator.

Dean takes echoing steps down the hall, spies an empty living room in much the same condition as the kitchen: old-style furniture, well-used but clearly kept in fine repair. Old-fashion toys litter the hardwood floors, and textbooks sit open on the heavy oak coffee table. He rounds the corner for the staircase, takes a creaky step, and then thinks better of it and steps back. “Jack?” he calls again.

“Just a minute,” Jack answers from somewhere upstairs.

The screen door bangs behind him, Mary walking slowly through the kitchen. Dean gestures up the stairs, then moves down the hallway for what he assumes is the basement door, except when he turns the knob he finds—

—a cloudless blue sky.

With an edge of vertigo, Dean pushes his head through the door frame and looks down, spying a distant field surrounding a massive oak tree. Not like the fields outside, flush with wheat ripening toward the harvest, but rolling lush green hills dotted with white stones and smatterings of flowers, the kind of thing Dean would expect to see on postcards from Ireland or England. A couple children play in the shadow of the tree. Beyond them, at the horizon, lies the skyline of a city.

“Oh. Hello, Dean,” Jack’s voice calls.

Dean whips around, looking up to find Jack standing on the wall—in the field—behind him. For a disorienting moment gravity doesn’t know what to do with Dean; it then pitches him toward the side, leaving him scrabbling for grip along the grass and dirt, his legs now dangling in the hallway beneath him.

“The other portal is in the bedroom upstairs,” Jack explains, gesturing to a square of beige wallpaper hanging in the space behind him, where his neniven stands. Jack opens his palm. “Aini shared their thoughts with me, and explained the schedule. The children choose this space to play in during the day, and then return to the farmhouse for the evening. Aini and their siblings stand guard throughout.”

“Lot of work to steal a handful of kids,” Dean grouses, scrubbing dirt off the knees of his jeans.

Mary’s voice calls out. “Dean?”

Dean looks down through the hallway door, to where his mom’s looking up at him with a wild form of worry. He waves her off from the disorienting journey into the—room. Field. The room-field. “Don’t bother, the angle’s not worth it.” Dean gestures north. Up. “Try the upstairs door, see if it’s any better.”

The children around the tree keep chatting and playing, oblivious to their guests. Dean flags his fingers at Jack and starts marching through the grass towards them. He calls out the Lynn sisters’ names.

A few faces turn toward him, but Dean recognizes only one of them from the news. He breathes out relief. “Libby.”

Libby rises from where she was kneeling, standing hesitantly. “Did our mom send you?”

Dean puts on his most reassuring smile. “We’re here to take you home.”

Rather than seeming happy, Libby takes a harrowing breath, her expression growing drawn. One of the kids moves to her side. He puts a hand on her shoulder and whispers something. Libby looks back to Dean, her face pinched and pale.

Dean’s not sure how to read the energy, but it doesn’t feel like Libby and the other kids are being held against their will. He leans on that hunch, adding, “Unless you don’t want to see her, for some reason? We just wanna talk, kid.”

A taller girl stands now, one with dirty blonde hair. By her description Dean assumes it’s Abbie, rising to the defense her sister. Abbie looks to the guy as well, seeking reassurance. Haltingly, she says, “Trent said that we could stay here. That Etri and Aini and Wemi would protect us. That we wouldn’t have to go back.”

“What’s happening?” a voice whispers right beside Dean, jolting him in his skin. He shoots a scowl at Claire that she misses, swiping at the grass stains on her knees.

Dean sighs, scrubs his face. “Trouble,” he grumbles back.

 

* * *

 

The neniven turn out to be more ‘protective’ than ‘parental’ toward their wards, so when the kids forego their bedtime routines in favor of building a bonfire, Aini merely rummages through the cupboards for marshmallows, and the other two neniven uncover a ridiculous number of muskoka chairs to set up for their guests around the firepit.

Sam and Mary come inside to open talks with the kids, so Dean hikes back across the field—outdoors, this time—to catch up Jody and the others on the predicament in the house. Jody’s expression turns grim the longer she listens, the conversation ending when she wanders off to make a phone call. Dean drafts Max and Alicia into driving their vehicles inside the yard’s shelterbelt, parking along the grass beside the lane.

Max has barely thrown his jeep into park before he’s making a beeline for the house, keen to see the portals Dean had described in fumbling laymen terms. Alex, Kaia, and Patience opt to follow Alicia over to the kids raiding the woodpile with Claire.

The smell of woodsmoke catches as Dean crosses to the porch, drifting in on the lazy breeze that curls within the trees. Inside the house, he knows, Abbie Lynn and her brother are deep in discussion around the kitchen table, Sam and Mary using Cas and Jack as translators with the neniven. To the front yard, then, where Libby and the rest of the runaways are poking sticks into the fire and catching marshmallows aflame.

Dean keeps his distance so that Claire and the other wayward women can build a rapport with the kids, maybe get the full story of how everybody got here. Libby at least seems willing to talk about how she came to the farmhouse, how her stepdad and her brother, Trent, never saw eye to eye, and so when Trent's girlfriend came into contact with the neniven, he jumped on the chance to leave with her. Two other kids share similar stories of their former homes, likewise skirting over the bleak parts in their lives.

The whole thing is too domestic for Dean’s liking, somehow seemingly normal despite the subject matter, and the situation being so bizarre. He ends up needing a breather and walks back to his baby. Dean lies down along the front seat, turns the key enough to play a cassette. He listens to Zeppelin with his eyes closed, breathing in familiar leather scents.

After his head has cleared, Dean hauls the cooler out from the back and grabs a lukewarm beer. He props himself up against the trunk and looks out at the last remnants of the sunset fading between the trees. Crickets chirp through the twilight. Dean keeps his gaze trained upwards, watching until the stars come out.

The porch door creaks open, a beam of buttery light cutting out from the kitchen. Dean finds Cas approaching through the dark, his grace bottle glowing in the crook of his arm.

Dean grins at the sight. “Interesting flashlight you got there.”

“At least it’s being useful,” Cas replies. He brushes up beside Dean. “Not joining the negotiations?”

Dean shakes his head. As hard as it was to listen to Libby’s home life, it was harder still to imagine coaxing her back into that place. Dean toes aside the lid to the cooler, hands a beer to Cas. “What about you, tired of being a translator?”

Cas settles in with Dean, popping the cap of his bottle. He balances his grace on the trunk between them, then takes a sip of his beer. “Jack already has a decent grasp on their dialect. He’s handling it fine.”

“You guys figure out how this whole thing started? Why these things took the kids?”

Cas sighs, tucking his arms around himself. “The neniven assumed they were helping. The world has moved on, making their original purpose obsolete. So Aini and the others adapted, and took to caring for neglected teens and runaways. They started with the voluntary, then found more through word of mouth.”

“Hm.” Dean just nods.

“Most of the children are almost of age,” Cas continues haltingly. “If they didn’t run away now, they would have when they became adults. At least here the neniven can care for them, and can help them re-establish lives wherever they want in the world.”

Dean plays with the label of his beer. “You saying we should leave them?”

Cas shakes his head. “No. It’s just a difficult situation. I don’t envy Sheriff Mills right now.”

“Yeah,” Dean agrees. “Knowing Jody, she’ll try to set the whole flock up in her spare room.” He chuckles. “Claire’s gonna kill her.”

Cas hums agreement. Dean looks at him more closely, eyeing the heavy lines Cas’ grace casts beneath his eyes.

“Hey.” Dean touches Cas’ back, slides a hand to his waist. “You tired?”

“Tired,” Cas says, nodding slowly. “Cold. Hungry. The mortal trinity.” He scrubs at his face. “Being human is exhausting.”

Dean dips his chin. “Wanna head back?”

Cas shakes his head. He takes another small sip of his beer, his hand mildly trembling.

Sighing, Dean slides off the trunk. He sets aside his bottle, wraps his hand around Cas’ cool wrist, feeling out the strength in his palm before slotting their fingers together. “C’mere. We can fix two of the three right now.”

Cas hums like he doubts it, though the corner of his mouth has lifted. He leaves his beer, picks up his grace bottle, and allows Dean to lead him back across the yard.

Dean keeps their hands together, even as the bonfire comes into view, the site crowned by actually-vintage lights and rows of citronella torches keeping the mosquitoes at bay. Somebody’s phone plays tinny music beneath the din of conversation. Alex and Alicia give welcoming cheers as Dean and Cas arrive.

A couple muskoka chairs sit empty, since Claire and Kaia decided to double up, but Dean opts to push Cas down into one of them and perch on the armrest beside him, stretching his arm across the backing for balance. The fire is bright, the voices warm, and Cas relaxes the longer Max and Alicia trade increasingly outlandish tales with Claire and Alex, his arm coming up to loosely hang around Dean’s waist.

The neniven come out around the time the marshmallows are running low, and drift through the circle touching shoulders, offering glasses of lemonade to Dean and the other latecomers. Libby and the other younger runaways, having gorged themselves already, start dozing in their seats, so Aini sweeps them back inside just as the night sets in full. A chorus of sleepy voices echo through the farmhouse windows, the kids giggling through brushing their teeth and changing for bed.

The porch door bangs open some time later, and Dean perks up in time to see Sam climb down the steps with Jody. Sam takes a moment to spot Dean, then murmurs something to Jody before making his way over. Leaning over the back of Cas’ chair, Sam says quietly, “Trent and Abbie’ve decided—they’re not going home unless it’s on their terms. But this girl, Marie, and her brother, they’re willing to go back. Etri and Wemi are working on restoring their existence as we speak.”

“That’s good,” Dean says, glancing back at Sam, then down at Cas. “It’s good, right?”

Sam shrugs. “I guess.”

Dean sucks his teeth. “Doesn’t feel like a win, does it?”

Sam pats Dean’s back. “Hey. We know everyone’s okay. They’ll come back in their own time. In the meantime, you two?” Sam wags a finger between Dean and Cas. “About time you cleared the air.”

“Yeah, Sammy, that’s what this is. ‘Clearing the air’.” Dean tucks his lemonade between his legs, freeing both hands for finger quotes. Sam laughs and, smiling, Cas tightens his grip on Dean’s waist.

An engine roars somewhere beyond the shelterbelt, high-beams bouncing between the trees. Dean and the other hunters all stiffen, rearing up from where they’re sitting, then relax at the sight of the familiar SUV pulling up to park between Jody’s truck and the Impala.

Donna hops out from the driver seat, greeting them with a distant howdy. She crosses the yard quickly, a giant smile on her face. “Heard you guys were throwing a party out here in the boonies. Would’a been a shame if you almost forgot to invite me.”

Sam cracks a smile. “That it would be.” He accepts the hug Donna gives him.

Claire jumps up from her chair, nearly knocking Kaia askew. She rushes to give Donna a hug, followed by Patience and Alex at a more reasonable pace.

“And look at you, fella.” Donna pulls up beside Cas and pinches his cheek. “Looking a little peaky at the edges, aren’t ‘cha?”

“I will look better once I restore my grace,” Cas says solemnly.

“Surely you didn’t come all the way out here for a tailgater now, did you, Donna?” Dean asks.

“Well, no,” Donna admits. “Jody called for backup, something about getting some kids up on their feet again. But you all are following us back down to Sioux Falls, am I right? There’s still that barbeque I distinctly remember you reneging on.”

Dean cracks a wide smile, laughing. “No way, no. You can’t hold that against me. We had a vamp nest in Kentucky that weekend! There’s no way we could've—”

“Excuses, excuses. I want to see that pulled pork in action, mister.”

“Who’s talking barbeque?” Max asks, glancing between everyone.

Soon enough, the night is lost to easy company, with Jack and Mary joining Sam and Jody by the fireside. It comes so simply, the laughter and conversation, the banter and snark and smiles. When the fire burns low and Aini comes out to tend the embers, the late hour catches them all by surprise.

Dean gets swept up in the departure of his family, the whole lot of them hugging and catcalling across their parking spaces in the field. He climbs into his baby with Cas in the seat beside him, Sam and Patience and Claire sliding into the back with easy banter. Claire accuses Dean of owing her a pizza for some bet he’d made while looped out on the perimeter, which turns into further bickering and a promise to pick up a pie from some pizzeria in Sioux Falls.

Dean reverses the Impala through a k-turn, the farmhouse fading in the distance. Smiling at the conversation bubbling behind him, Dean catches Cas’ eye and shares with him his grin.

The summer evening feels like it might never end.

**Author's Note:**

> [Rebloggable on Tumblr](http://deancasbigbang.tumblr.com/post/180357637130/title-it-never-gets-dark-author-vaudelin-artist).  
> Thank you for making it this far!


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